Psychology in the Soviet Union Ils 272

Brian Simon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134684281
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is a collection of papers created from a visit by teachers and educationalists to the U.S.S.R in April 1955 by invitation of Academy of Educational Sciences of the R.S.F.S.R. The aim of this volume is to familiarize English readers with the general direction of Soviet psychology, but designed to be of interest to teachers as well as psychologists.

PART I

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, 1953–5 ¹

BY
A.A.SMIRNOV

DURING THE TWO YEARS which have elapsed since the last Psychological Conference, Soviet psychologists have carried out a considerable amount of work which has contributed towards the development of psychology as a materialist science. But we must not overestimate the degree of success achieved. The recent advances have not yet yielded sufficiently tangible results to justify the claim that gaps in theory and in its application to practice have been closed. Psychology is still not satisfying the demands made upon it.

I

A review of work undertaken must touch first on theoretical questions. Here the primary problem is the nature of the psyche. It might be supposed that there could be no significant difference of opinion on this question since all Soviet psychologists start from the premisses of dialectical materialism. But several articles have recently appeared which clearly deviate from the only correct view, that psychic processes are a function of the brain;² these aroused keen opposition from the general body of Soviet psychologists, as was clear from subsequent discussion in the press.

Another important theoretical issue is that of the place of psychology among other sciences. With which sciences should psychology be grouped? Psychologists undoubtedly differ on this fundamental problem.¹ An open debate in the press is needed, a broad discussion as to whether psychology is a natural or a social science, or whether it occupies a special position as one of the human sciences, since man is a product both of natural and of social development.²

Other notable theoretical questions now under discussion include the problems of human needs and of human abilities. Is the presence of a specific need a prerequisite of human action, or can social necessity be a sufficient motive, requiring man to act in a certain manner irrespective of any personal need? Again, what part do innate tendencies play in the development of abilities? Can we speak of predispositions in this connection, and what is to be understood by the term? What are the relations between the typological characteristics of higher nervous activity and human abilities?

Solution of these problems has both practical and theoretical importance. Moreover, profitable theoretical discussion requires the support of concrete investigations; it must not, as is too often the case, consist merely in abstract statements savouring of personal opinion and lacking a factual basis.

II

What has been done during the past two years in the main departments of psychology?

Direct study of the material substratum of psychic processes may be considered first. Investigation of the physiological basis of psychic activity is a vital corner-stone in the building of a materialist science of the human psyche. Soviet physiologists are studying man’s higher nervous activity, but their achievements, both in extent and speed, still fall far below what is needed. All the more essential that psychologists should take part in this work and that the two sciences should find an effective meeting-place.

Soviet psychologists have made an extensive study of higher nervous activity; in particular, attention may be drawn to researches on the work of the analysers and the reflex nature of reception and its mechanisms. E.N.Sokolov has studied the reflexes involved in the regulation ofsensitivity, above all the orienting reflex, as one that plays an essential role in the ‘tuning’ of the analysers. Among the many components of this reflex, particular attention was given to the vascular and the related skin-galvanic responses and to changes in the electrical activity of the brain.¹ These investigations showed the characteristics of the orienting reaction both to indifferent and to conditioned stimuli. At the same time, and this is especially important, they threw light on the character of the reaction to verbal stimuli. They also indicated the exceptional stability of the vascular reactions evoked by new direct stimuli acting with a verbal stimulus which creates a ‘set’ ² to these stimuli. S.V.Kravkov carried this work further in his study of interaction between analysers; that is, of conditioned-reflex connections formed not only in one analyser but also between different interacting analysers. Such research rests on Pavlov’s view that higher nervous activity is a constituent part of a much broader problem, that of the reflex nature of sensation.

Among other studies of conditioned reflexes underlying sensation, mention may be made of B.G.Ananiev’s investigations into functional asymmetry, observed in the operation of twin receptors. Investigation of the ‘leading eye’, the ‘leading organ of hearing’, the ‘leading hand as organ of touch’, showed that the same receptor was not always preferred for different functions. Functional asymmetry, that is, the different results obtained when twin receptors are taken separately, is specific not only for each sensory system (such as sight, hearing or touch) but also for different functions within each system. Even within the limits of a given function (such as the eye’s power of accommodation) one receptor or the other may be preferred to a greater or lesser extent according to the experimental conditions. This and other data led to the conclusion that ‘functional asymmetry in twin receptors arises not so much from the receptors themselves as from the twin activity of the cerebral hemispheres’. It develops from conditioned reflexes and is the ‘manifestation of complex processes of interaction of the hemispheres in the reflex activity of the cortex’.³

Conditioned-reflex variation in sensitivity has also been the subject of research by L.A.Shvarts. He studied how a conditioned increase in sensitivity, produced in one set of conditions, is transferred to other conditions and to the action of other stimuli. This question is of great theoretical significance, since research may throw light on the problem of the permanent development of sensitivity, by contrast with temporary, phasic improvement.⁴

A group of studies by E.I.Boiko on the physiological basis of psychic processes is concerned with the dynamics of nervous processes in the visual analyser. Motor reaction, speed and latent period are studied and used as indices of the processes evoked by the action of a visual stimulus. The results show the changes in the state of a single point of the visual analyser, observed for differing periods of time after the application of the stimulus, and the duration of the excitation remaining after the action of the stimulus has ceased. Further, the spread of excitation from one point of the visual analyser to others is traced, information obtained about the speed of irradiation and concentration of excitation in the visual analyser, and a study made of the inductive relations between different points of an analyser. Changes in the irradiation and concentration of nervous processes are shown to depend upon how often the action has been practised and how far it has become automatic.

Boiko has recently tried to discover the mechanism of creative mental processes, i.e. those which lead to the establishment of something new. He proposes, as a physiological explanation, an hypothesis that involves functional combination: that interaction of conditioned-reflex processes occurs as a result of partial spatial coincidence of excitation in the cerebral cells. A partial sharing of structural elements—as observed when different systems of connections function simultaneously and cause redistribution of nervous impulses entering the brain—such, broadly, is the material basis of creative, productive mental processes according to this hypothesis.

Another group of studies under the direction of B.G.Ananiev has been directed to bio-electric phenomena, such as those which accompany the so-called ideo-motor actions and spatial conceptions. Results show a variation in the electrical activity of the motor area of the cortex, even when movement is only conceived. Data were obtained on the resemblances and differences between bio-electrical phenomena recorded during the perception and during the conception of stimuli. Investigation of the electrical activity of the brain during attention to aural stimuli has been undertaken by E.A. Milerian at the Institute of Psychology of the Ukrainian Ministry of Education. At the Institute of Defectology of the Academy of Educational Sciences (A.P.N.), L.A.Novikova has compared the EEG’s of oligophrenic and normal children; she has also studied the special nature of bio-electrical phenomena in the visual areas of blind persons, and shown that bio-electrical activity takes place in the eyemuscles of those who have lost their sight when they visualize objects.

The method of formation of temporary connections in man is an important aspect of the study of the physiological foundations of mental activity. Investigations directed by A.R.Luria have demonstrated the special way in which new connections are formed with the help of the second signal system, and how sharply this process differs from the mode of their formation in animals; immediate or sudden formation of a connection in man, its rapid stabilization and striking stability, and the ready alteration of the system of connections, etc. They also throw light on the gradual development of the role of language in the formation of temporary connections in children, and indicate the peculiar features of this development in mentally retarded children.¹

To sum up, these researches are undoubtedly of value as a first practical attempt by psychologists towards creating a materialist psychology. The work is closely linked with that of physiologists. Psychologists and physiologists do, in fact, frequently work hand in hand. Close creative cooperation between them is an indispensable condition for the successful solution of these problems.

III

Important work has been devoted to the complex cognitive processes, though attention has not been equally distributed among the several related processes. Relatively little attention has been paid to the complex processes of perception and observation. The investigations by L.V.Zankov and others into the interrelations between language and visual presentation in teaching are welcome, but these are concerned with only one aspect of perception and ignore all other aspects of this process. Much still remains to be discovered about the laws of perception.

Memory has also been insufficiently studied of late. The few isolated investigations into related questions (at the A.P.N. Institute of Psychology and by Ukrainian psychologists) do not constitute a reconstruction of this field on the basis of Pavlov’s teaching. Mention may be made of initial attempts in this direction,² but these achievements do not measure up to the requirements. The relative elaboration of the problem of memory which has already taken place is no grounds for relaxing efforts to study the many unsolved problems. This is the more essential since the physiological mechanisms of psychic processes may be discovered in this field more easily than in any other.

Little attention has been given to the study of imagery. Only isolated investigations, mostly concerned with spatial images, have been carried through.¹ Yet this study is essential to a knowledge of the laws whereby sensation becomes thought. The study of spatial imagery is of particular importance in relation to polytechnical education.

Psychologists have made a broader study of the thought processes, this closely coincides with research in educational psychology, especially the psychology of learning.

One of the key problems under investigation is that of the interrelation between the sensory and the verbal-logical (or abstract) in thinking, between the visual image and the concept; a question basically concerned with the interaction between the two signal systems in thought processes.² Results show how the interrelation between the two signal systems changes during growth, and the complexity of the dynamics of their interaction. This is shown in various aspects of children’s school work. As children grow older, images not only play less part in thought processes but also undergo a certain qualitative change and begin to fulfil a function other than their original one. At about 7 to 9 years of age, images appear as the condition and foundation for generalization, and so for the full understanding of verbal material (e.g. a text). At this stage it is by means of images that verbal material is understood in a generalized form; images serve as a support for the verbal formulation of the essential points of the text.

Much research is being devoted to overcoming the negative role of images in thought processes. The visual image, which usually furthers understanding, may sometimes have a negative effect, hindering correct generalization and limiting it to the particular examples illustrated by a given image (e.g. a sketch or diagram). Investigations show that variation of visual material, designed to overcome the limited nature of the image, only has a positive effect when it provides the basis for twin kinds of generalization, that is, generalization of both the essential and the inessential. In this connection the guiding role of language is shown to be necessary when a concrete image (e.g. a given diagram) is produced. In such cases language is the prerequisite for developing a generalized understanding of those special instances which illustrate the general concepts or general laws to be learned.

A prominent place among investigations into thinking is taken by its study as analytic-synthetic activity: the character of the concrete processes of analysis and synthesis according to the conditions in which they take place. This extremely important question is only now beginning to be understood.

The researches of S.L.Rubinstein at Moscow University are concerned with the concrete processes which lead to a particular outcome of thinking activity.¹ In addition, N.A.Menchinskaya’s researches aim to clarify the laws governing the formation of concepts, that is the transition from undifferentiated, unformulated knowledge to knowledge that is both formulated and differentiated. This transition comprises simultaneously the processes of analysis (disentangling of the separate features of a concept), and synthesis (bringing the separated features together into a defined system and generalizing them). Results have indicated broadly...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, 1953–5
• PART II: THE PHYSIOLOGY OF HIGHER NERVOUS ACTIVITY AND CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
• PART III: THE BASIS OF SPATIAL DISCRIMINATION
• PART IV: CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
• PART V: A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS THE DEFINITION OF ‘SKILL’ AND ‘HABIT’
• APPENDIX I: PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE U.S.S.R.
• APPENDIX II: THE FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF PSYCHOLOGY
• BIBLIOGRAPHY