Thinking is determined by a person’s needs, his interests, motives, tasks, goals, that is, a person’s thinking is purposeful in nature, associated with the needs and motivation of a particular individual.
A person’s individual thinking is directly related to his mind, but the concept of mind is broader: it includes features of both thinking and other cognitive processes. Thinking is the processing of information, a set of interconnected sensations, thoughts, and images. As a result, it gives us an idea of how everything in nature relates to each other. Thinking is a tool of the mind, one of its prerequisites. The mind is the repository of knowledge, intelligence, intuition, personality traits (its beliefs, positions, programs), it determines a person’s ability to think and solve emerging problems.
A person’s upbringing, his training, the chosen type of occupation, preferences, and the uniqueness of life constitute the features of the individual characteristics of a person’s thinking. Age, the type of higher nervous activity, and the ratio of the first and second signaling systems are also important. You can read more about types of thinking in our blog:
Two levels of individual characteristics of human thinking
Individual characteristics of human thinking in psychology are analyzed at two different levels: the individual and the personality.
When talking about a person as an individual, we consider certain neurodynamic characteristics and processes. We are talking about the following:
- How do the first and second signaling systems relate and, accordingly, what type of thinking, artistic or mental, predominates.
- How nervous processes proceed: the speed of acquiring knowledge, mental performance, and human sensitivity depend on their strength or weakness. The speed of thinking and its flexibility or, on the contrary, difficulty depend on their activity or, on the contrary, inertia.
Personal factors of thinking include:
1. Installation (operational and semantic).
Operating is the readiness to take some steps, while relying on previous experience and assuming the development of events taking into account existing conditions.
Semantic – a higher level setting. It acts as a kind of filter that corrects operating settings. Meaningful attitudes determine the content, pace of development, and performance of the individual as a whole.
2.Motives. They activate and structure thinking. Meaningful motivation imparts valuable personal meaning to thinking.
3.Emotions. They help evaluate information, activate thinking, reduce the time required to find a solution to a problem, and generate new information. perform four functions: evaluative, activating, the function of heuristics (techniques that reduce the time of searching for a solution to a problem), the function of a generator of new information.
4.Personal past experience. It is concentrated in a person’s knowledge and determines the characteristics of his thinking. Only well-structured knowledge turns a person into an intellectual and distinguishes him from an amateur.
5. Socio-psychological factors. Thus, the authoritarianism of teachers and parents gives rise to stereotypical thinking, absence or low level of creativity. On the contrary, parity in relationships creates the preconditions for independence, criticality, originality of thinking, the ability to take into account the position of another person and, as a result, for creative productivity.
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Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Kazakh-Russian University
Department of Pedagogy and Psychology COURSE WORK
in the discipline "Psychology"
Topic: “Individual characteristics of the quality of thinking” Karaganda - 2009
Content
Introduction 31. The essence of thinking as a psychological process 51.1 General concept of thinking 51.2 History of the development of thinking 71.3 The thought process and its phases 101.4 Operations of mental activity 132. The main types of thinking and their features 162.1 Subject-based thinking 162.2 Visual-figurative thinking 172.3 Verbal-logical thinking 183. Individual characteristics in thinking 203.1 Theories of individual differences 203.2 IQ Eysenck's technique 223.3 Intellectual activity 243.4 Creative field technique 26Conclusion 30References 32
Introduction
The problem of thinking has long been a branch of philosophy and logic rather than a branch of psychology. Therefore, in the study of thinking, the struggle between materialism and idealism was especially clearly manifested. The materialistic approach to thinking was based on the classical formula of sensationalism (there is nothing in the intellect that would not have previously existed in sensory knowledge). However, this formula most often led to a mechanical interpretation of thinking as a combination of memory images or a product of association. Naturally, this concept led to the assertion that thinking itself is not a special, specific process. Therefore, for a long time, the processes of productive thinking were not the subject of special research.
The opposite position was taken by idealistic philosophy, which saw in thinking special forms of activity of the human spirit, not reducible to any more elementary processes. In our time, the position that thinking should be considered as a manifestation of a special “symbolic” activity of the spirit has become the basis of the philosophy of the neo-Kantians and manifested itself in the works of major idealist philosophers. The idealistic approach to thinking as a special form of mental activity formed the basis of the school, which for the first time in psychology made it the subject of special experimental research. This school was called the Würzburg School, uniting a group of German psychologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. (O. Külpe, A. Messer, K. Bühler, N. Akh), who believed that thinking is a special, further indecomposable function of consciousness.
As a result of an experimental study, psychologists of this school came to the conclusion that thinking is not based on any images, is not carried out with the help of speech, and constitutes special “logical experiences” that are directed by corresponding “attitudes” or “intentions” and are carried out as special psychological “acts” " While highlighting thinking as a special type of mental processes, the Würzburg school, however, separated it from both the sensory basis and speech mechanisms, in other words, it presented thinking as a special form of activity of the spirit, approaching the last position of extreme idealism.
The problem of a scientific approach to thinking thus turned out to be unresolved, and psychological science faced the question of a materialistic explanation of thinking processes. This determines the relevance and practical significance of the topic of the course work.
Target
Basic qualities of human thinking
Individual characteristics of thinking in psychology are usually determined by the following qualities:
- Logicity is the ability to follow a certain sequence when considering a question, i.e. order determined by logic. This is the ability to think, prove the correctness or fallacy of a conclusion, and check the course of reasoning.
- Depth of thinking (thoughtfulness) is the ability to find the essence, the main thing, the most essential, often hidden. This is the ability to understand not appearance, but essence; formulate an idea based on a variety of facts, understand as a whole, notice patterns, understand the causes and anticipate the consequences.
- Broadness of thinking is the ability to consider problems from all sides, interconnected with other phenomena and sufficiently critical, covering different areas of knowledge.
- Flexibility (plasticity) – the ability to change ways of solving problems in changing circumstances. Flexibility of thinking allows us to consider phenomena and objects, relationships and properties in different aspects. If conditions change, flexible thinking allows you to restructure the initial data and use their relativity. When new inputs are received, plans change to take them into account, as a result of which the plan for solving the problem also successfully changes. This property is associated with the mobility of thought processes.
- Inertia of thinking is the opposite of flexibility. Inert thinking does not look for new ways, preferring to reproduce what has already been learned and known, that is, it is a tendency to think in stereotypes when a person experiences difficulties when it is necessary to switch to another system of actions.
- Originality of thinking is a person’s ability to pose new questions; use known experience, and at the same time show independence of judgment and find an independent solution. Independence, originality of thinking presupposes self-criticism (knowledge of one’s strengths and weaknesses). Independence also reveals the creative nature of thinking.
- Critical thinking is the desire to evaluate objectively, apply only proven judgments, and carefully check objections before discarding them. It involves the ability to identify the advantages and disadvantages of reasoning and prove the truth of the propositions put forward.
- Speed of thinking is the speed at which thought processes occur. It manifests itself in the amount of time needed to solve problems and in the ease of implementing ideas. Quick thinking is especially important in critical situations, when you need to make a decision very quickly and take action.
- Clarity of thinking is simplicity, sincerity, and uncomplicated expression of thoughts.
- Inquisitiveness is the need to find the most suitable solution to a problem.
- Wit is the ability to quickly navigate the material and find the right solutions to problems.
- Initiative is the desire to search and find a solution to a problem independently, in a wide variety of ways and means.
- Originality is the ability to generate new ideas that are different from those already familiar.
In psychology, the following are also identified as individual characteristics of thinking:
- The pace of development of thought processes, which is understood as the least amount of exercise that is required in order to understand and generalize the principle of the solution.
- Economy of thinking is the number of sequential reasoning that allows one to learn a new pattern.
- Stability is the preservation of a focus on previously identified important features and generally accepted patterns.
- Awareness is the ability to verbally express both the result of the work done and the techniques that were used.
All individual characteristics of a person’s thinking are important for the correct assessment of his abilities and knowledge. But the fundamental sign of thinking is the ability to identify the main thing, the most essential, in order to then, thinking independently, move to new generalizations. Thinking is much more than a statement of an event or a fact. His path is to delve into the essence of a phenomenon and discover the general law of development of all somewhat homogeneous phenomena, no matter what their external differences.
Cognitive qualities of thinking are individual in nature and undergo changes with age, but the main thing is that they can be corrected, their performance can and should be improved. Thanks to the plasticity property of the brain, its cognitive functions can be developed at any age. Thinking and attention, memory, perception can be trained daily, with pleasure and benefit using exercises for the development of thinking in adults.
World of Science
Subject to general laws, the thinking of a particular person is also characterized by significant individual characteristics, which manifest themselves in the depth of thoughts, their independence, criticality, consistency, flexibility and speed. Sometimes these characteristics are called qualities of the mind.
The depth of thinking is manifested in a person’s ability to penetrate into the essence of phenomena, to be cognized, to highlight their essential characteristics, to reveal the causes, to identify their connections with other phenomena, to foresee their further development. The opposite feature is superficiality of thinking, which consists in the fact that a person identifies storied, unimportant signs of phenomena from which reliable conclusions cannot be drawn. Independence of thinking is characterized by a person’s ability to pose new problems, find unheard of, often original, approaches to solving them, and take initiative in creative search. Critical thinking lies in the ability of an individual to strictly evaluate his thoughts and outside influences, to identify strong and weak aspects in them, not to accept every guess as truth, but to question and check it. Uncritical thinking is characterized by the fact that a person easily perceives other people's thoughts without proper verification and evaluation. Consistency of thinking presupposes a person’s ability to adhere to logical rules and not contradict himself in reasoning, to prove and justify his assessments and conclusions. Inconsistency manifests itself in the chaotic nature of a person’s reasoning and does not allow him to successfully complete assigned tasks. Flexibility of thinking is characterized by a person’s ability to easily move from one method of solving a problem to another if the first method turned out to be inappropriate, to be free from patterns, and to quickly respond to changing circumstances. The opposite feature is inertia of thinking, which manifests itself in slowness of thinking and a tendency to take standard actions. The speed of thinking is determined by the time during which a person copes with certain tasks. The features considered are the most important. However, their list does not exhaust the diversity of mental activity of various individuals. Moreover, man does not receive them from nature. They are formed in the process of personality development and depend on the typological characteristics of the nervous system, manifested in the strength, mobility, balance of the processes of excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex.
