The Problem of Child's Mental Development and Childhood in Scientific Works of A. Zaporozhets

The views of A. Zaporozhets, a famous psychologist of the 20th century, concerning child's mental development and childhood have been revealed in this article. The general scientific (historical-pedagogical analysis, generalization, retrospective, chronological), historical and genetic, comparative, problem-target, axiological and prognostic methods have become the basis for carrying our this study. A. Zaporozhets looked on childhood as a unique, valuable period. A. Zaporozhets noticed that child's development has integrated nature. It means that child's all mental processes (perception, thinking, imagination, emotions etc.) develop in cooperation and relationship. A. Zaporozhets investigated the physiological bases of psychic, the peculiarities of child's thinking, speaking, will, feelings, imagination, memory, attention and perception, character and temperament. Besides, A. Zaporozhets studied the origin and nature of emotions, the peculiarities of the formation of thinking at different stages of early and preschool development, regularities and conditions of transfer from visual-operative and visual-imaginative thinking to verbal, reasoning thinking as well as the possibilities of forming children's generalized ideas about surrounding reality. The periods of childhood (infantile, pre-preschool, preschool and primary school age) which were determined by A. Zaporozhets and the specific features of children's education at different stages of age have been characterized. The scientist made a conclusion that children's age mental development, which depends on gaining general social experience, has deep organic basis, which creates necessary background for development and depends greatly on the peculiarities of functioning of appropriate organic systems which realize different kinds of children's activity. A. Zaporozhets emphasized that the development of child's cognition starts from perceptible cognition, then rises to corresponding concepts, and finally it returns to reality and practice. The results obtained in the works of A. Zaporozhets laid the foundations of new understanding of emergence and functions of mental behavior regulation.