Cheat sheet on psychology -. THINKING AND SPEECH, TYPES OF SPEECH

It is impossible to imagine life without thinking and speech, but few people think about what each of these concepts represents. What role does language play? What is the function of thinking? What is primary and what is derivative? The relationship between language and thinking worried the great minds of mankind hundreds of years ago, and is now a topic that interests many psychologists, philosophers, linguists and other scientists. Let's figure out what the relationship is between thinking and language. One of our programs, Cognitive Science, teaches you different ways of thinking. You will look at situations more broadly and find non-standard solutions to problems.

Language and speech

Language and speech, although close concepts, are not identical, and they should be distinguished.

Language is a complex sign system that serves as a means of storing and transmitting information. Language is a specific social means of communication, the same for all representatives of a particular society and a constant variable for a given period of time.

Most scientists identify the following functions of language:

• Thought-forming function. Language formalizes and expresses thoughts in the form of words.
• Cognitive function. Language is a way of understanding the world, accumulating and transmitting information to other people and subsequent generations.
• Communication function. Language is a means of communication between people.

Speech is the direct process of communication, the manifestation of language in various types of speech activity: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Speech is language in action. If language is a constant variable, then the speech of each person is individual and changes depending on personality characteristics, education, context, situation, mood, etc. Language is the same for a separate group of people, but speech is individual and unique.

Linguist Roman Jakobson identifies the following functions of speech:

• Communicative (referential). The most important function in the communication process, because expressed in the transmission of a message (information about an object).
• The appellative (directive) function corresponds to the recipient of the message. Here the speaker tries to influence the addressee in order to cause some kind of reaction.
• The expressive (emotive) function corresponds to the sender. Expresses the speaker’s feelings, his attitude towards the information he conveys. What is important here is not what is said, but how. Thus, one person can say the same phrase in completely different ways, depending on the situation.
• Phatic function (contact establishing). The purpose of the message is to establish contact, initiate or interrupt communication, and check whether the communication channel is working. This function is mainly implemented in greetings, congratulations, and the ability to conduct small talk.
• The poetic (aesthetic) function corresponds to the message. The main thing here is the form of the message, i.e. attention is directed to the message as such, beyond its content. This is how poems or songs can be liked by their form, when the meaning of the lyrics is not clear to the listener.
• The metalinguistic function is associated with any difficulties in communication when verbal commentary is required. It allows you to find out whether the language is understandable. For example: “I don’t understand what you mean,” “Am I making myself clear?”

We can conclude that language and speech are two sides of the same coin, where language is a tool, and speech is a human activity in using the language code. So now let's look at what is meant by the concept of “thinking” and what types of thinking scientists distinguish.

Article:

Speech is the external psyche of the subject and, accordingly, one of the most important psychological functions, giving a person the opportunity to be understood by others.
Speech translates mental phenomena into an observable process. And vice versa, in the case of understanding spoken speech, such a process turns into a thought, a psychological product. The question of the connection between speech and thinking is, in a certain sense, key in the psychology of speech. It is obvious that normal speech is certainly meaningful, since its main function is to express meaning. At the same time, the forms of connection between thought and word are difficult to imagine. Researchers identify three main functions of speech: communicative, regulating and programming. 1. The communicative function of speech ensures communication between people using language.

Language is a system of verbal signs, a means by which communication between people is carried out. Speech is the process of using language to communicate between people. Speech is not so much communication during work as communication for work. speech is one of the means that constructs this activity. Speech is essentially not the business of an individual, not the business of an isolated native speaker: it is, first of all, the internal activity of society, carried out by it through individual native speakers or, more precisely, with their help.

The system of verbal symbols expands the possibilities of a person’s adaptation to the environment, the possibility of his orientation in the natural and social world. Through the knowledge accumulated by humanity and recorded in oral and written speech, a person is connected with the past and the future. The human ability to communicate using symbolic words has its origins in the communicative abilities of great apes.

Language is a certain system of signs and rules for their formation. A person masters a language throughout his life. There is a critical period for language acquisition. After 10 years, the ability to develop the neural networks necessary to build speech centers is lost. Mowgli is one of the literary examples of loss of speech function.

Language knowledge is not inherited. However, humans have the genetic prerequisites for communication through speech and language acquisition. They are embedded in the characteristics of both the central nervous system and the speech motor apparatus, the larynx. Ambidexes are individuals whose functional asymmetry of the hemisphere is less pronounced and have greater language abilities.

2. The regulatory function of speech realizes itself in higher mental functions - conscious forms of mental activity. The concept of higher mental function was introduced by L.S. Vygotsky and developed by A.R. Luria and other domestic psychologists. A distinctive feature of higher mental functions is their voluntary nature.

It is assumed that speech plays an important role in the development of voluntary, volitional behavior. Initially, the highest mental function is, as it were, divided between two people. One person regulates the behavior of another with the help of special stimuli (“signs”), among which speech plays the most important role. By learning to apply incentives to one's own behavior that were originally used to regulate the behavior of other people, a person comes to mastery of one's own behavior. As a result of the process of internalization - the transformation of external speech activity into internal speech, the latter becomes the mechanism with the help of which a person masters his own voluntary actions.

3. The programming function of speech is expressed in the construction of semantic schemes of speech utterances, grammatical structures of sentences, in the transition from an idea to an external detailed utterance. This process is based on internal programming, carried out using internal speech. As clinical data show, it is necessary not only for speech expression, but also for constructing a wide variety of movements and actions.

How can one explain the connection between a mental phenomenon—a thought—and a sounding, physically registered word?

At one pole is the position of classical behaviorism (thinking is silent speech), at the other is the idea formed within the framework of the Würzburg school (thinking and speech have different origins and represent different entities). The identification of speech and thinking or, on the contrary, their complete demarcation is opposed by the idea of ​​​​their relationship: as S. L. Rubinstein put it, there is unity, but not identity, between thinking and speech.

Thinking in general is a purposeful process consisting of solving a certain type of problem or drawing conclusions. According to existing data, the thought process includes a number of components (mechanisms) that may be different when solving different types of problems. The general components of thinking are:

• creating mental models of the situation that include the conditions and purpose of the task;
• interaction of incoming information with the repertoire of knowledge and schemas stored in long-term memory;
• model manipulation;
• identifying a result that meets the initial conditions of the task.

The process of solving a problem, or operating with a mental model, can occur in different modes: logical, well-recognized and subject to verbal expression, and intuitive, in which the subject of the thought process is not aware and cannot describe in words the course of his mental actions.

Thus, we see that thinking is a special cognitive function consisting in the creation of a new mental product. The course of the thought process in some cases can be reflected in the speech of the thinking subject, in others - not, i.e. it is not connected with speech in the necessary way.

Let us now name the main components involved in the speech process. When generating speech, the initial component is the semantic state (including the subject’s ideas, the models of situations that arise in him, his emotional experiences), as well as the motivating impulse to verbalize this semantic state. Next, the previously developed connections of this semantic state with verbal structures and semantic fields are updated, and the hierarchical levels of linguistic structures are also activated.

Comparison of the mechanisms of mental and speech processes allows us to identify the differences and intersections of their spheres of action. Let us draw attention to the fact that in the speech process - during the production of speech and its perception - at the beginning or end of the process, the presence of the most important semantic component is necessary, for which the term “understanding” is adequate. This component (from the point of view of its mechanism) can be qualified as the presence of a model of reality (situation) in the cognitive sphere of the subject. This semantic component is necessary for the spoken speech to be complete, meaningful, and so that it... was clear to the listener. The same type of semantic component - understanding, the presence of a model of reality (situation) - is necessary, as shown above, in the thinking process.

The intersection of speech and thinking occurs in the semantic component - the understanding of the elements of reality. For the thinking process, this component serves as material for carrying out the necessary operations; for the speech process - a launching pad for verbalization and verbal descriptions. The specificity of the speech process and its main function is the creation of a verbal product adequate to the semantic content and its exteriorization. That is why speech can be included in any mental process containing this kind of semantic component. Such a process can be not only thinking and perception, but also emotional experience.

Analysis of the relationship between speech and thought processes presents speech as a kind of “multivalent” entity, which allows its inclusion in various types of cognitive functions. However, thinking also has the “multivalent” property. Thought processes are possible in verbal form, based on visual, auditory and other perceptual signals.

There are known forms of thoughtful speech that takes into account the interlocutor, the audience, adheres to accepted norms in the relationship between speaking and listening, etc., and ultimately leads to results that are desirable for the speaker. (The sphere of this kind of norms and techniques is usually considered under the rubric of speech art.) This kind of “smart speech” is the result of the speaker creating, preliminary or promptly, a mental model of the communication situation, taking into account the listener’s response, finding adequate response forms, attracting the appropriate speech repertoire and etc. The named operations are mental in nature, which indicates the fundamental possibility of including thinking in the organization of speech communication.

Thinking

To have a more complete picture, first let's define what consciousness is.

Consciousness is the highest level of reflection of the surrounding reality, inherent only to a person, which is expressed in the subjective experience of events in the external and internal world, the formation of a report about these events and a response.

In turn, thinking is a person’s ability to capture the world in concepts and draw conclusions based on them in the form of judgments and inferences. This is purposeful logical reasoning, sometimes about completely abstract things that are not directly related to a person, to his state here and now. Thinking is the main component of consciousness.

It is customary to distinguish the following types of thinking:

1. Practical thinking is the earliest type of human thinking both in evolution and ontogenesis. This type of thinking is necessary in those situations where it is most appropriate to solve a mental problem directly in the process of practical activity.
2. Visual-figurative thinking allows a person to reflect objective reality in a more multifaceted and diverse way. This type of thinking can be observed in cases where the content of a mental task is based on figurative material (during analysis, comparison, if necessary, draw an object, depict it schematically or in the form of a symbol, generalize various objects, events and phenomena).
3. Verbal and logical thinking is characteristic only of humans. The peculiarity of this type of thinking is that the problem is solved in verbal form. Thanks to the verbal form, a person uses more abstract concepts. It is this type of thinking that allows us to establish general patterns that determine the development of nature and society, and man himself. Thinking in its verbal-logical form is manifested in language.

The problem of the relationship between language and thinking in psychology can be represented by two poles: on one - the identification of these concepts, their merging together, on the other - their separation, independence from each other. But thinking and language are a complex structure that cannot be separated or equated. Being in a contradictory unity, language and thinking influence each other and cannot exist separately.

How is verbal thinking formed?

The origins of all these rather complex processes that we just talked about are formed in early childhood. This process was studied in great detail by the Swiss educator and psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980). Subsequently, he summarized his findings in the book “Speech and Thinking of a Child” [J. Piaget, 1994].

Thus, he highlighted certain features of children's thinking and speech. He found that children's thinking is characterized by egocentrism, intellectual realism, lack of understanding of relationships, difficulty in understanding, inability to introspect and other distinctive features. At the same time, Piaget, exploring the differences between adults and children, focused not on what a child cannot do, but on what he, unlike an adult, can do, and how this helps him in development.

We have already begun to talk about the synchronicity of thought and speech as a necessary phase of a child’s development. Thinking and speech, speech activity in young children are almost synchronous, and Jean Piaget saw a certain logic of development in this. Talking to oneself, the child voicing all the thoughts that come into his head is a kind of training, a step towards the formation of meaningful speech, without which communication and exchange of information are impossible. This stage of development has its own characteristics.

The main occupation of any child is games and other objective activities, because due to his development he cannot yet engage in any other activity. The movements that he makes while exploring this world directly contribute to his intellectual development. Even the simplest movements - taking, grasping, throwing, pulling - contribute to the accumulation of sensory experience, and therefore material for future generalizations.

As the child develops, a complication of objective activities is observed. So, a slightly older child can make Easter cakes out of sand, roll a car, try to imitate the movements of animals he has seen or the way adults work. For example, they saw boards, dig the ground, push a stroller, etc. Accordingly, the child’s life experience is enriched and the basis for future generalizations in mental activity continues to expand.

Later, children begin to sculpt from plasticine and draw with pencils and paints, glue appliques and assemble figures from construction sets. This also contributes to the accumulation of experience and intellectual development. The connection between the development of fine motor skills of the fingers and the formation of neural connections in the brain has long been established. Therefore, it is so important to involve children in activities that develop finger dexterity and precision of complex movements, and to stimulate their interest in new practical activities.

Thus, children’s understanding of the world and accumulation of knowledge occurs through practical activities and solving practical problems. What is the connection between the development of thinking and speech? There are several aspects to this. Thus, through oral speech, children are given information about the world around them, about what is called what, what can be done and what cannot be done, and how exactly something should be done. For example, how to assemble a construction set, hold a spoon, tie shoelaces.

The word as a unit of speech contains a symbolic designation of an object, phenomenon, action, state. And at the same time, the word contains a certain generalizing function. Above, we began to talk about the fact that by denoting a specific object, living creature or phenomenon with a specific word, we lay the basis in the child’s brain for subsequent recognition and generalization of similar objects, animals, and phenomena. Having shown a cat once to a child who has already begun to speak and called it a cat, we have the right to expect that when he sees some other cat, he will realize that this is also a cat.

A physically and mentally healthy child quickly masters this generalizing function of language. The mental association of objects or phenomena into groups according to some characteristic is a new, higher level of mental activity. Of course, children are not immediately able to isolate the main system-forming feature for combining something into a group and designating it with a word responsible for designating objects of this group. But this skill is gradually improving.

This is especially noticeable in the third year of a child’s life. Thus, the child himself initiates communication in the family when he wants or asks for something: a toy, candy, going for a walk, watching a cartoon. In order for a child to get exactly what he wants, he needs to formulate his thoughts so that adults understand his desires, and this is also an important stage in the development of verbal thinking.

The German philosopher and psychologist William Stern (1871-1938) did a great deal of work on analyzing the development of preschool children, which he summarized in his book “The Psychology of Early Childhood up to the Age of Six” [W. Stern, 1915]. And he showed that a child’s speech becomes social and meaningful quite early, and verbal thinking is a necessary condition for this.

This is especially noticeable when the child begins to strive for independence and when he forms, so to speak, his own social connections. Language becomes a means of transmitting information and a means of communication not only with adults, but also with other children. For example, during a joint game. Interest appears in speech that is not addressed directly to the child, and children learn to understand and perceive it.

At this stage, it is important to help the child learn to correctly formulate simple sentences, improve the grammatical structure of speech in general, and help enrich the child’s vocabulary at a level that is understandable to him. Then the baby will be able to understand the message, even if the subject of the message is not in sight. Then he will understand the story or fairy tale, even if a visual illustration is not provided for it.

“Reverse” training can be no less useful. For example, invite the child to tell what is happening in the picture [O. Gromova, 2016]. Here it is very important to give children tasks that are appropriate to their age and development, and in no case show negativity if the child cannot cope with the task as well as adults want.

For clarity, let us give an example often used in pedagogical literature. Most children, looking at a picture of a boy wiping his face with a towel, easily answer the question “What is the boy doing?” However, not everyone can immediately recreate the chain of events and answer what the boy was doing before he began to wipe his face, even if the picture clearly shows that he is standing near the sink and water is flowing from the tap, and the boy, apparently, was washing his face.

It is even more difficult for a small child to guess what the boy in the picture will do next, although it is clear that he is not dressed in casual clothes and should get dressed to continue the day. Here you may need the help of adults who will help the child recreate the picture of the event, for example, offering to remember how the child himself is going to kindergarten. This can be a very effective help. Of course, provided that adults have already taught the child to wash and dress on his own, and do not do it for him, wanting to save time on getting ready.

That is why the main emphasis in the development of verbal thinking is always on the practical side of the matter, the child’s gaining his own sensory practical experience, and not just on adults explaining “how it should be.” Now let's summarize and bring together the factors influencing the formation of speech thinking.

How to form verbal thinking in children:

• Stimulate the child’s objective activity.
• Stimulate the development of fine motor skills of the fingers (construction toys, drawing, applications).
• Teach age-appropriate elements of self-care (dressing, washing, cleaning up toys).
• Give information about the world around us using the example of visual events and phenomena (names of animals, plants, objects, natural phenomena).
• Ask questions that require a detailed answer in the form of a simple sentence.
• Ask to tell what is shown in the pictures.
• Ask to imitate and identify the sounds of the surrounding world (cat meowing, dog barking, rustling, creaking, etc.)
• Do not try to do for the child what he can do himself.

By the way, avoiding mistakes in the formation of verbal thinking is often even more important than buying the most expensive construction set with a large number of small parts for the development of fine motor skills or definitely sending your child to a drawing club so that he can improve his artistic skills. But what can prevent a child from developing verbal thinking?

The relationship between language and thinking

The debatability of the problem is due both to the complexity and duality of the nature of thinking and language, and to the insufficiency of our knowledge about these concepts. There are various theories and views on this matter. Here are some of them.

The outstanding linguist of the 20th century, Emile Benveniste, said: “It is wrong to think that language is the clothing of thoughts. Clothes can be taken off, but words are an integral part of thought. Consequently, the question of whether thinking can proceed without language or bypass it, like some kind of obstacle, turns out to be meaningless.”

Soviet psychologist Lev Semenovich Vygotsky said that the word also applies to speech as to thinking. It is the smallest particle that contains, in its simplest form, the basic properties inherent in speech thinking as a whole. A word is not the name of a separate object, but its generalized characteristic, a whole complex of concepts, i.e. the word is both a process of thinking and a means of communication, therefore it is part of speech. Lev Semenovich believed that it is the meaning of a word that is the connecting link that is called verbal thinking.

Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and philosopher, paid special attention to the problem of the relationship between language and thinking in his works. He suggested that language is the same human ability as the visual and auditory sensory systems, the circulatory system, etc. By equating the language ability with other brain modules, he thereby substantiated its innate nature.

Willard Quine, an American philosopher, logician and mathematician, on the contrary, considers experience to be the only possible connection between a person and the outside world - objects influence our senses, which then formalize the information received and send signals to the brain. In his opinion, cognition of the surrounding reality, just like learning a language, occurs according to the “stimulus-response-reinforcement” scheme. Thus, every word we use is the result of the purposeful influence of the social world on the individual.

As you can see, on the issue of the relationship between language and thinking, the opinions of philosophers, linguists and psychologists differ, but some principles can be identified that most scientists agree with.

The nature of speech

Speech is a structure used by man since time immemorial. In this regard, there is no clear answer to the question of whether the human ability to speak is innate, or whether speech is an acquired skill for everyone. There are different approaches to this issue, taking one side or the other.

For example, people who grew up without interaction with society cannot master any human language, which would seem to indicate that speech is an acquired skill.

At the same time, there are facts that suggest that speech is an innate ability. The baby is able to recognize the sound of human speech among many other similar sounds. Another interesting phenomenon is that in all children the development of speech skills occurs according to the same pattern, which partly also speaks of certain innate abilities for speech.

There are many hypotheses suggesting the origin of speech. Below are some of them:

• Learning Theory;
• Chomsky's theory of specific inclinations;
• Piaget's cognitive theory;
• Psycholinguistic theory of speech development.

Learning theory

Learning theory suggests that from birth a child is inclined to imitate. He first imitates sounds, then words, and then clumsily constructs his first sentences. His first words usually play the role of sentences that briefly describe his desires and motives, an excellent example here would be the word “am” used by kids, which can simultaneously mean both his desire to snack and what he is eating at the moment.

The child receives positive reinforcement from the parents after pronouncing the first sounds and then words, partly this helps him learn new words and grammatical structures and remember them. But what is surprising is that at the stage of sentence formation, parents usually encourage more competent logical conclusions and inventions, and not the correctness of grammatical structures as such. Contrary to this, the child also learns grammatical rules. Also, this theory does not take into account the child’s ability to form words and the child’s very rapid acquisition of speech at a certain period of his life, as well as the need to have inclinations for the development of any skill.

Chomsky's theory of specific inclinations

This theory assumes that a newborn person already has certain abilities to develop speech as such, which are normally formed by the age of one year. From this moment on, the child is very sensitive to the perception of speech, and this period continues until about three years of age, which generally theoretically explains why people removed from human society for a long time in childhood are not able to master any language. At the same time, this is the period of development and formation of speech, while the process of thinking continues to develop in a person until he matures.

Piaget's cognitive theory

According to this theory, a child from birth is inherent in the function of perception and some processing of information. That is, a child is born with a mentality that develops over time. This theory helps explain why a child can make up his own words. Another interesting fact that indirectly confirms this theory is that children at the beginning of speech development speak only about what they already understand.

Psycholinguistic theory of speech development

This theory suggests that speech arises through an endless cycle of thinking and speaking, during which gradual improvement of both occurs. Speech for thinking acts as a kind of symbols that allow you to “dress” thought for its formation, at the same time, with the improvement of thinking ability, it is necessary to expand vocabulary and speech, which also leads to its development.

Commonality of language and thinking

Language and thinking are a unity based on two key aspects:

• The genetic aspect was formed in the process of evolution. It is expressed in the fact that the emergence of language was closely related to the emergence of thinking, and vice versa.
• The functional aspect represents the inseparability of these two components, the impossibility of language existing without thinking and the ability to develop each other.

Discussions about the connection between these two concepts are based on the philosophy of the development of thinking. Language provides a person’s thoughts with a real existence, accessible to other people. At the same time, it not only allows one to express a thought, but also shapes it, which indicates their close connection. At the same time, language and thought are not equivalent. Each component develops and functions according to its own special rules and is relatively independent. So, depending on the type of thinking, goals of mental activity, etc. the nature of the relationship between language and thinking in the process of communication and cognition can vary, and then we can observe the distinctive features of these two systems.

Verbal thinking: what is it?

In its most general form, speech thinking is thinking during speech and speech while thinking. This is the ability to formulate a thought in a format suitable for transmission in written or oral form, and in such a way that this thought is understood by others. Thus, speech thinking is closely interconnected with both the speech process and the thinking process.

The first person to deeply and thoroughly study the relationship between speech and thinking in human development was the Russian teacher and psychologist Lev Vygodsky (1896-1934). He summarized the results of his research in the work “Speech and Thinking”, the full text of which was included in the “Complete Works” (Vol. 2) [L. Vygotsky, 1982]. The results of his developments have remained relevant to this day, so let’s take as a basis the scheme of verbal thinking developed by Vygotsky.

Scheme of verbal thinking (according to Vygotsky):

• Motive or internal origin of thought.
• An opinion or attempt to mediate a thought in the inner word.
• Inner speech or an attempt to mediate thought with external words, taking into account their meaning.
• The transition from meaning syntax to verbal syntax.
• Speech itself or the voicing of a formalized thought.

Let us clarify that this is a diagram of the verbal thinking of an adult. Speech thinking in children goes through certain stages of development before the child masters a sufficient body of knowledge to operate with vocabulary and conceptual apparatus for the formation of internal and external speech. Lev Vygodsky, in his work “Speech and Thinking,” examined in detail all these stages, identified the nuances and patterns of the formation of the conceptual apparatus and concepts through which a person expresses his thoughts. So, what are the components of verbal thinking?

Philosophy of non-identity of language and thinking

Language and thinking are two separate systems, filled with their own content and existing according to their own independent laws of development and functioning. Based on this, the following differences between these systems are distinguished:

• The structural components of thinking are: concepts, judgments and inferences. Components of language: phoneme, morpheme, lexeme, word, sentence, etc.
• Thinking reflects the world in ideal images with varying degrees of depth and detail, gradually obtaining a more specific, clear and complete understanding of objects and the essence of phenomena. Language, for its part, records the acquired knowledge; it highlights and emphasizes in it what was previously produced by thinking.
• Thinking is formed under the influence of the laws of psychology and logic, while the cognitive abilities of the subject play a very significant role, and language is determined by the structure of a particular language, developing against the background of social norms and cultural traditions. Thus, the thinking of all people in the world is carried out according to general laws, and languages ​​and speech are very different from each other.
• Thinking and speech have different genetic roots: human thinking comes from the visual-figurative thinking of animals, and human speech comes from the sound inarticulate signals of animals.

So, it is obvious that thinking and speech are not synonymous or interchangeable concepts. They form a close, inextricable connection in which speech is a thinking tool for each of us. When you express your point of view, convey your thought to others in verbal form, you improve your mental activity and are engaged in its improvement. Therefore, when it is difficult for you to explain something to a person, but you try to find the right words and formulate the thought correctly, know that at this moment you are developing speech skills, and accordingly improving your own thinking.

There is always a choice: to develop or not, so let's strive upward, not slide down. Read more, study your native language, try to speak correctly and beautifully. You will obviously become a more interesting conversationalist, but it is much more important that in this way you will develop your thinking, and therefore yourself.

We wish you success!

The role of speech in the thought process

Speech plays a huge role in the thinking process. A thought in the human head always appears in verbal form, even if for some reason the person is unable to speak in its usual form. This is possible if, for example, a person is deaf and dumb or did not grow up among people - in this case, gestures or emerging mental images will be used as speech, they will play the role of words.

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The beginning of the thought process is a question or the formation of a problem that needs to be solved. Then a certain thought is born, which is only a general preparation, and in the process of processing by the brain it turns into something more integral and with structure.

Definition 1

The process of putting thoughts into some initial verbal form is called inner speech.

It is with the help of inner speech that preparation takes place to put the general idea into words in the form of oral or written speech. At the stage of internal dialogue, a thought is processed to form subsequent meaningful phrases and sentences from it using all kinds of grammar constructions; this process can be compared to the compilation of code in programming - what was initially just a kind of representation, a thought form, turns into a harmonious series with the help of words, phrases and then sentences. The Soviet psychologist Vygotsky described this phenomenon as follows: “thought is accomplished in the word.”

Finished works on a similar topic

Course work The relationship between thinking and speech 440 ₽ Essay The relationship between thinking and speech 220 ₽ Examination The relationship between thinking and speech 190 ₽

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Despite the information presented above, you should not equate the concept of “speech” with the concept of “thinking” - one may well exist without the other, although they are closely interrelated. This is easy to verify: any thought can be expressed using various speech constructions and thereby prove the inconsistency of such an equation. Also quite illustrative are those cases when a person has some kind of thought, but he cannot express it in a verbal form that is accessible and understandable to everyone, or he can, but the meaning is partially lost or distorted.

Speech is characterized by obsolescence, but this is not typical of thinking. The thought may be the same, but depending on what era or even environment a person is in, he will choose different words to express it. Moreover, this will also apply to internal speech; it also cannot be equated with thinking, because at different times we can remember the same thought in different ways, or, conversely, forget the thought and remember only an incomplete verbal formulation, which cannot fully help restore the essence of the original idea. However, in general, a person remembers a thought better than its verbal description.

Obstacles to the formation of verbal thinking

The first and most important thing that can interfere with the full mental and speech development of children is the lack of their own sensory practical experience and objective activity. The problem is bigger and broader than it might seem at first glance. Many parents, and especially grandmothers, transform well-founded fears for the child’s health into a series of endless prohibitions: don’t go, don’t touch, don’t interfere, etc.

Of course, safety should come first, and it can be ensured using civilized methods. So, at the very initial stage of objective activity, when the child is just beginning to master the simplest movements - pulling, dragging, touching - you should remove all piercing, cutting, breaking objects further and higher and close electrical outlets so that the baby simply cannot reach all of the above. Then excessive care will not become an obstacle to the development of the baby.

The second thing that can interfere with the formation of speech thinking and speech and thinking itself is an excessive enthusiasm for early development methods. Early development does not mean that it is definitely good or definitely bad. All children develop at an individual pace, and it is important not to overload the child, for example, with reading and English, when he does not yet know how to formulate sentences in Russian.

Starting foreign language classes too early carries another danger for immature speech thinking and the speech apparatus. Each language has its own pronunciation features. And until communication skills in their native language have been formed, it will be difficult for a child to differentiate when to use a word that generalizes certain objects and phenomena, and how to pronounce vowels and consonants in certain words.

Likewise, one should not be too hasty in learning to read and write. You must always remember that oral speech is primary, and learning to write correctly or read fluently without the skills of mental formulation and oral vocalization (pronunciation) of your thoughts is simply unrealistic. Literacy is not an end in itself, but a means of effective communication and a means of conveying one's own thoughts. Therefore, first you need to learn how to formulate them into a logically integral sentence, and only then work on the grammar.

You should not delay the transition to the next stage of development if it is obvious that the child is developing at a rapid pace and is already cramped within the existing framework. In this sense, the concept of the “zone of proximal development,” which Lev Vygotsky introduced into pedagogy, can help. According to Vygotsky, “development processes follow learning processes” [L. Vygotsky, 1982].

Therefore, if a child is already striving to do and understand something, but cannot yet cope with it without outside help, this is the best moment to help him gain new knowledge and new experience. This applies not only to preschool age and the early stages of the formation of speech thinking, intelligence and other abilities.

This is also true at the stage of mastering the school curriculum, when the bar to which one must strive will always be slightly higher than the level of knowledge at which the student is. Vygotsky described this technology in detail in his book “The Problem of Learning and Mental Development at School Age,” and this technology is still relevant, as it was almost 100 years ago [L. Vygotsky, 1996].

And finally, for normal development, including the development of speech thinking, the physical and mental health of the child is of great importance. Therefore, it is very important to consult a doctor in a timely manner if there are disturbing moments in the child’s health and development, if there are speech defects or a clear inability to formulate even a simple thought, when the ability to speak has already formed.

In most cases, minor developmental deviations are corrected using modern techniques. If any serious disease is discovered, the chances of successful treatment will be greater if treatment is started as early as possible. And for this there must be a timely visit to the doctor so that it is possible to quickly make a diagnosis. Now let's summarize the above.

What can hinder the development of verbal thinking:

• Lack of practical sensory experience.
• Teaching reading, writing, a foreign language until mastering oral speech in the native language.
• Teaching a child beyond the “zone of proximal development.”
• Undiagnosed physical and mental health problems.

Note that the development of verbal thinking does not end in childhood or adolescence. We have already found out earlier that verbal thinking is thinking during speech and speech while thinking. This is the ability to formulate a thought in a format suitable for transmission in written or oral form, and in such a way that this thought is understood by others. Thus, speech thinking is closely interconnected with both the speech process and the thinking process.

Naturally, this ability can be developed and improved almost indefinitely, “upgrading” oneself as an effective communicator, leader, training leader, or sales manager. The topic is of great academic interest, and each new generation of researchers brings something new to it. In this regard, the work of a group of scientists “Study of speech thinking in psycholinguistics” [T. Akhutina, I. Gorelov, A. Zalevskaya, 1985]. As for the applied side of the matter, we can recommend the “Textbook of Rhetoric. Speech training with exercises” [H. Lemmerman, 1986]. The author attaches even greater importance to training verbal thinking for successful performance than to memorizing texts.

To everyone who understands that we learn all our lives, even if we don’t strive for it too much, we recommend our “Best Self-Education Techniques” and “Cognitive Science” programs, which will help you learn everything new more effectively. We wish that the knowledge you receive will make your life better and more interesting! We also ask you to answer one interesting question:

We also recommend reading:

• Storytelling
• Why you need to improve your vocabulary
• How does thinking work?
• Top 5 most important soft skills for every child
• The Power of Deep Thinking
• Theories of thinking
• Genetic psychology
• Language and thinking
• Vygotsky's concepts: contemporary relevance and actual modernity
• Digest: critical thinking
• Psycholinguistics as a tool for in-depth study of speech and language

Key words: 1LLL, 1Cognitive science