12. STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT OF MEMORIZATION PROCESSES

The problem of memory development has long been central to psychology. The scientific development of this problem is directly connected with the study of the psychological nature of memory processes, with the characteristic of the age-related features of memory in children, with the elucidation of the ways and means of its education. According to P.I. Zinchenko , not only the characteristics of certain features of the memorization process, but also the age characteristics have been fixed for a long time the terms “mechanical” and “logical” memory. That is why these two types of memory usually acted as two genetic steps in its development. In classical associative psychology, the problem of memory development was virtually eliminated. The reduction of memory to the mechanical imprinting of various effects by the brain excluded from the very beginning the assumption of any qualitative changes in it. It was only about quantitative changes associated with the gradual accumulation of individual human experience. But already within empirical psychology there were conditions for the emergence of the concept of two forms of memory — mechanical and logical. Understanding of consciousness as a simple associative set of sensations and ideas, and memory as a simple function of brain plasticity did not satisfy many psychologists, since it did not reflect the real complexity and, above all, the activity of consciousness processes in humans. Attempts to overcome the passivity, the mechanistic nature of classical associative psychology went in different ways, but they were in one thing: an active, active beginning of consciousness was added to the mechanistic understanding of brain activity. In W. Wundt , apperception was such a beginning (1912), and in H. Geffding , the will (1904). E. Meiman tried to supplement the mechanistic ideas about memory with the activity of attention, the formation of auxiliary associations, the desire to observe, to imprint and others (1909, 1913). However, all this acted as various spontaneous forms of manifestation of the activity of consciousness. They were simply added to mechanically understood brain activity as special forces that could be used in their own way.

Representatives of the so-called functional psychology, along with representatives of the Würzburg school, especially contributed to the formulation and consolidation of the concept of mechanical and logical memory.

The concept of mechanical and logical memory has been consolidated as a result of the preservation for the lower forms of memory of the association mechanism in its old classical understanding and the superstructure above it of various forms of consciousness activity (arbitrariness, meaningfulness, etc.) - for higher forms of memory. Associative, supposedly not semantic links and semantic, as if not associative links, represented a concrete form of expression of this concept in memory.

Mechanical and logical memory and their pointed forms - physiological and spiritual ( A. Bergson ) - were considered as two forms of memory of a fundamentally different nature both in content and in mechanisms. The problem of these two forms of memory continues to be discussed.

In recognition of mechanical and logical memory it is necessary to distinguish at least two sides.

A person deals with material of various degrees of complexity, which is recorded in memory in various forms of reflection: in individual and general representations, in concepts of various degrees of generality, etc. Different materials make different demands on human mental activity, on the processes of his memory. to its physiological basics. The material thus appears as one of the important conditions for the success of memory. It is known that the material related in its content, which causes more or less complex processes of understanding and comprehension, is memorized much more efficiently than a set of disconnected elements. In the latter case, the meaning of the processes of comprehension during memorization decreases, the role of repetitions increases. From this point of view, one can speak conditionally about mechanical memorization as opposed to meaningful, logical. This purely empirical difference in memory processes, which is determined by the characteristics of the material, is of great practical importance, since it is associated with different memorization conditions and its various success. It is one thing to memorize a series of meaningless syllables and another thing to memorize a system of thoughts, facts expressed in a coherent text.

The concept of mechanical and logical memory in various forms is widespread not only in foreign, but also in domestic psychology. It defined the content and direction of many studies and for a long time hampered the development of both the general theory of memory and the problems of its development. In the studies of the so-called mechanical memory, the attention of psychologists was directed to identifying the ability of the brain to imprint, to form traces, to preserve them in isolation from meaningful human activity with a certain material. The study of logical memory was of the same nature. They were aimed at discovering the abilities of the mind to seize and hold sense, thoughts apart from brain activity.

The subject of many studies, as pointed out by PI Zinchenko , was the study of differences in the productivity of logical and mechanical memory, changes in the volume of one or the other with age, differences in the amount of memory for objects of different meaning. In such studies, facts were established that were important for characterizing such aspects of memory as its productivity in relation to different materials, the connection of memory with understanding, attention, emotions, etc. However, they did not study the memory processes themselves, their composition, or and development. In this regard, research facts often could not get the necessary theoretical disclosure and correct evaluation. From the standpoint of the concept of mechanical and logical memory, a long time was given in many respects a false characteristic of the age peculiarities of the development of children's memory. The memory of not only preschoolers, but also younger schoolchildren was extremely impoverished. It is well known that Meiman’s statement that memory before adolescence is predominantly mechanical. In a different form, but the same thought was carried out by other authors ( V. Stern , 1922; Lobzin , 1901; Pohlmann , 1906; Brunswick , Goldsheider and Pilek , 1932, etc.).

As PI Zinchenko points out, the wide possibilities for fruitful research of memory processes for a long time were limited to serious mistakes in understanding Pavlov's teachings about higher nervous activity. Under these conditions, neither classical associationism nor idealism in the interpretation of the essence of memory and its development could be completely overcome. Errors of one order and another continued to persist in the position that has become firmly established in Russian psychology that two kinds of connections form the basis of memory processes — associative and semantic; associative links were considered mechanical, not semantic, and semantic - not associative. The division of connections into associative and semantic preserved, above all, serious errors in the interpretation of the physiological bases of memory. Conditioned reflexes were considered the physiological basis of associative processes, supposedly characteristic only of lower memory. As a basis for semantic connections, supposedly characteristic only for the highest form of memory, some still unexplored patterns of nervous processes, fundamentally different from those of the formation of conditioned reflexes, were allowed.

Associative and semantic connections were contrasted by their psychological content. Associations were treated as purely external, mechanical connections. It was believed that their formation does not depend on the content of the objects being linked, nor on the meaning, the meaning for the subject. The lowest form of memory was no longer meaningful. The memory was supposedly acquired only ostensibly at the highest levels of its development thanks to the participation in it of the expanded processes of understanding and thinking. This led to the opposition of the lower and higher forms of memory from the development of its meaningfulness.

P. I. Zinchenko indicates that domestic psychologists correctly associated memory with active

human activity, with its goals, motives and ways. However, serious errors were made in the interpretation of the subject's activity in the memory processes, resulting from the recognition of two types of connections - associative and semantic. In the description of the conditions for the formation of associations, only the need for coincidence or successively in time objects was emphasized. The decisive role of the conditions of life, the subject's attitude to these conditions, and in connection with this, his activity in the formation of connections was ignored. This interpretation of the formation of associations was associated with an incorrect assessment of the conditioned reflex activity as a mechanical activity. It came into clear contradiction with the conditions for the formation of temporary neural connections that are revealed in Pavlov's teaching, and, first of all, with the need to reinforce conditioned stimuli, manifestations of orientation towards them, etc.

The division of links into associative and semantic was one of the reasons for the underestimation of the theoretical and practical significance of involuntary memorization. Involuntary memory is usually associated with associative links, arbitrary - with semantic. Since associative links were understood as not semantic, accidental, not requiring the activity of the subject, but acting stimuli based only on contiguity over time, involuntary memory received a passive and random characteristic as memory. Meanwhile, involuntary memory, which is the only form in animals and does not lose its value in humans at all stages of its historical and ontogenetic development, cannot be accidental. It can not be passive, since the formation of temporary connections is included in the active activity of the subject.

The division of bonds into associative and semantic is antigenetic. It eliminates the continuity in the development of physiological mechanisms of memory and the characteristics of the main features of memory at different stages of its development. The lowest form of memory, based on associative links, loses meaningfulness. Associative links are not associated with understanding, with the initial forms of thinking, they are opposed to semantic connections. The latter, like understanding, are detached from their genetic sources, therefore the possibility of studying their gradual complication and development at different stages of phylogenesis and ontogenesis is excluded. The activity of higher forms of memory is also detached from the previous stages of development. For the same reasons, genetic continuity is also excluded in the characterization of voluntary and involuntary memory from the physiological basis and psychological characteristics of these types of memory. The reduction of lower memory to mechanical associations created the psychologists with the appearance that they know this memory. The main attention of researchers was directed to the study of higher forms of memory. However, this study could not be fully fruitful for the simple reason that the higher, more complex can not be understood without understanding the lower, simpler. Semantic, logical memory was built over mechanical. Pavlov's position about the universal character of conditioned-reflex connections underlying the associations as their physiological mechanisms, a broad biological interpretation of the essence of these connections and the conditions of their formation completely exclude the opposition between associative connections with semantic ones. All connections with which memory operates at all stages of its development are associative, conditional-reflex in nature and conditions of education, and, at the same time, meaningful in content and vital meaning. (According to the materials of A. I. Zinchenko.)