In psychology there is often such a concept as "cognitivism".

What is it? What does this term mean?

Explanation of the term

Cognitivism is direction in psychology, according to which individuals do not simply react mechanically to external events or internal factors, but use the power of reason to do this.

His theoretical approach is to understand how thinking works, how incoming information is deciphered and how it is organized to make decisions or perform everyday tasks.

Research is related to human cognitive activity, and cognitivism is based on mental activity rather than behavioral reactions.

Cognitiveness - what is it in simple words? Cognitive- a term denoting a person’s ability to mentally perceive and process external information.

Concept of cognition

The main concept in cognitivism is cognition, which is the cognitive process itself or a set of mental processes, which includes perception, thinking, attention, memory, speech, awareness, etc.

That is, processes that are associated with information processing in brain structures and its subsequent processing.

What does cognitive mean?

When describing something as "cognitive"- what do they mean? Which one?

Cognitive means relating in one way or another to cognition, thinking, consciousness and brain functions that provide introductory knowledge and information, the formation of concepts and the operation of them.

For a better understanding, let's consider a few more definitions directly related to cognitivism.

A few example definitions

What does the word "cognitive" mean?

Under cognitive style understand the relatively stable individual characteristics of how different people think and understand, how they perceive, process and remember information, and the way an individual chooses to solve problems or problems.

This video explains cognitive styles:

What is cognitive behavior?

Human cognitive behavior represents thoughts and ideas that are inherent to a greater extent in a given individual.

These are behavioral reactions that arise to a certain situation after processing and organizing information.

Cognitive component- is a set of different attitudes towards oneself. It includes the following elements:

• self-image;
• self-esteem, that is, an assessment of this idea, which can have a different emotional coloring;
• potential behavioral response, that is, possible behavior based on self-image and self-esteem.

Under cognitive model understand a theoretical model that describes the structure of knowledge, the relationship between concepts, indicators, factors, observations, and also reflects how information is received, stored and used.

In other words, it is an abstraction of a psychological process that reproduces key points in the opinion of a given researcher for his research.

The video clearly demonstrates the classic cognitive model:

Cognitive perception- this is an intermediary between the event that occurred and your perception of it.

This perception is called one of the most effective ways to combat psychological stress. That is, this is your assessment of the event, the brain’s reaction to it and the formation of a meaningful behavioral response.

The phenomenon in which an individual’s ability to assimilate and comprehend what is happening from the external environment is limited is called cognitive deprivation. It includes a lack of information, its variability or chaos, and lack of order.

Because of it, obstacles arise to productive behavioral reactions in the world around us.

Thus, in professional activities, cognitive deprivation can lead to mistakes and interfere with making effective decisions. And in everyday life it can be the result of false conclusions regarding surrounding individuals or events.

Empathy- this is the ability to empathize with a person, to understand the feelings, thoughts, goals and aspirations of another individual.

It is divided into emotional and cognitive.

And if the first is based on emotions, then the second is based on intellectual processes, the mind.

TO the most difficult types of learning include cognitive.

Thanks to it, the functional structure of the environment is formed, that is, the relationships between its components are extracted, after which the results obtained are transferred to reality.

Cognitive learning includes observation, rational and psychonervous activity.

Under cognitive apparatus understand the internal resources of cognition, thanks to which intellectual structures and systems of thinking are formed.

Cognitive flexibility is the brain's ability to move smoothly from one thought to another, and to think about multiple things at the same time.

It also includes the ability to adapt behavioral responses to new or unexpected situations. Cognitive flexibility is of great importance when learning and solving complex problems.

It allows you to receive information from the environment, monitor its variability and adjust behavior in accordance with the new requirements of the situation.

Cognitive component usually closely related to the self-concept.

This is an individual's idea of ​​himself and a set of certain characteristics that, in his opinion, he possesses.

These beliefs can have different meanings and change over time. The cognitive component can be based both on objective knowledge and on some subjective opinion.

Under cognitive properties understand such properties that characterize the abilities of an individual, as well as the activity of cognitive processes.

Cognitive factors has an important role for our mental state.

These include the ability to analyze one’s own state and environmental factors, evaluate past experience and make predictions for the future, determine the relationship between existing needs and the level of their satisfaction, and control the current state and situation.

Cognitive impairment - what is it? Find out about this from ours.

What is “Self-Concept”? A clinical psychologist explains in this video:

Cognitive assessment is an element of the emotional process, which includes the interpretation of the current event, as well as one’s own and others’ behavior based on the attitude to values, interests, and needs.

The cognitive theory of emotion notes that cognitive appraisal determines the quality of the emotions experienced and their strength.

Cognitive Features represent specific characteristics of cognitive style associated with the individual’s age, gender, place of residence, social status and environment.

Under cognitive experience understand the mental structures that ensure the perception of information, its storage and organization. They allow the psyche to subsequently reproduce stable aspects of the environment and, in accordance with this, promptly respond to them.

Cognitive rigidity call the inability of an individual to change his own perception of the environment and ideas about it when receiving additional, sometimes contradictory, information and the emergence of new situational requirements.

Cognitive cognition is engaged in searching for methods and ways to increase efficiency and improve human mental activity.

With its help, it becomes possible to form a multifaceted, successful, thinking personality. Thus, cognitive cognition is a tool for the formation of an individual’s cognitive abilities.

One of the traits of common sense is cognitive biases. Individuals often reason or make decisions that are appropriate in some cases but misleading in others.

They represent an individual's biases, biases in assessment, and a tendency to draw unjustified conclusions as a result of insufficient information or unwillingness to take it into account.

Thus, Cognitivism comprehensively examines human mental activity, explores thinking in various changing situations. This term is closely related to cognitive activity and its effectiveness.

You can learn how to deal with cognitive biases in this video:

This is an activity aimed at assimilating new information by students with maximum activity in accordance with the goals and objectives. During the learning process, a controlled change in human behavior occurs. From the point of view of cognitive psychology learning is the management of the process of acquiring new knowledge, the formation of abilities and cognitive structures in general, and the organization of the student’s cognitive activity. It is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of training, “teaching” and “teaching”. Learning - it is an internal process of changing a person’s cognitive and personal structures. Teaching - this is a kind of intermediate result of learning, meaning the conscious use of acquired knowledge in specific behavioral situations. Education - This is an effective level of learning, characterized by the acquisition of new experience. As stated above, training has a systemic and structural organization. The following structural components can be distinguished in this system.

1. Motivational, or incentive, component. It includes cognitive needs and formed on their basis motives for learning. Learning is always a process of active interaction between student and teacher. As a result of their active communication, educational activities are actually carried out. Very often, interest acts as a motive for educational activities. During training, this motive undergoes changes. At the first stages of learning, interest is most often focused on the external characteristics of learning: visual and organizational features. Then interest is transferred to the result of the activity, i.e. actually “what can I do? " And at the last stage it is transferred to the learning process - it becomes interesting to actually learn, to gain new knowledge. Having an interest in learning evokes positive emotions and stimulates student activity.

2. Software-oriented component. The main element of this component is awareness of the purpose of learning, as an anticipation of the final result and formation of an indicative basis for activity. During the learning process, the student must develop elements of individual experience in the form of knowledge and skills. During training, individual knowledge is formed into a system of abstract concepts that represents a subjective model of reality. The formation of such a model is the learning goal for the student, the achievement of which begins with the receipt and assimilation of information, which subsequently forms the information-oriented basis of the activity. On this basis, a training action program is developed.

3. Effective and operational component. This component is based on the actions and operations through which learning activities are implemented. In the structure of educational activities, actions of understanding the content of educational material and actions of practicing educational material are distinguished; These are the so-called executive learning activities. In addition to executive activities, educational activities include tests, allowing for assessment and adjustment of executive actions. These educational actions are carried out through the activation of higher mental functions and abilities, which in teaching practice are often also called actions: mental, perceptual, mnemonic, etc. A specific way of carrying out educational actions are operations (for example, a calculation operation, mastering a specific type of problem solution, an operation of analyzing a literary work, etc.).

Learning is easier for those who have a better memory, faster thinking, who can quickly figure things out, discover a non-standard solution, etc. Consequently, the first thing we must teach our future “excellent student” is the ability to remember well and quickly, to think, to be able to understand an abstract thought, to “see” the non-obvious. Simply put, training must begin with the development of general mental abilities. Abilities can be developed through appropriate training in appropriate exercises.

Exercise is the main form of implementation of educational activities. In order to master any activity, a person needs to repeat it many times. Exercise is an active process of systematically and purposefully performing an action in order to assimilate and improve it. The quantity and quality of exercises depend on the learning goals and the difficulty of the task. Behaviorists have been actively involved in the problem of exercise. They investigated the “law of exercise.” Its essence is that, under equal conditions for carrying out an activity, repetition of a specific action facilitates the assimilation of new behavior, leads to an increase in the speed of its implementation and a decrease in errors. It was subsequently discovered that this law has limitations. Not under all conditions does repeated repetition contribute to the effective strengthening of a skill or the acquisition of new knowledge. For example, when forming a number of intellectual knowledge and creative abilities, the classical exercise is ineffective. However, when developing most motor skills, repetition is a very important factor.

The exercise will be successful if the following conditions are met.

1. The student’s awareness of the purpose of the exercise and the indicators of the correctness of its implementation.

2. A clear understanding of the rules for performing the exercise.

3. The student’s understanding of the sequence and technique of performing the exercise.

4. Repeated execution of exercised actions.

5. Availability of feedback during exercises. The student must constantly know at what level of improvement he is, and determine this according to accessible and understandable criteria.

6. Constant monitoring and analysis of the causes of errors made by the student.

7. Formation of the student’s self-control skills and the results of their actions.

8. Gradual complication of exercises in the direction of increasing the difficulty of tasks. In general, exercises allow

actively develop many skills, especially perceptual-motor and intellectual ones.

The above components are linked into a single training system. The system-forming variable of learning is the social relationship between teacher and student and their forms of cooperation. In other words, learning is always a joint activity. At various stages of learning, a restructuring of both the psychological learning system and joint learning activities occurs. During the latter, there is a transition from pragmatic to cognitive perception of the world and the formation of an individual-subjective system for mastering new knowledge. As a result, the student acquires independent learning skills.

In the process of learning activities, the student assimilates elements of individual experience that provide him with mental and personal development. This type of training is called developmental training. To implement developmental learning, it is important that the child understands the purpose and subject of his activity. Sign consciousness teaching is decisive. The implementation of conscious educational activity is carried out with the help of actions aimed at solving special educational tasks. The main function of the educational task is the child’s mastery of generalized methods of action. Through the system of educational tasks, the formation theoretical generalized thinking. Solution tasks are carried out by a number of special educational activities. Learning activities have the following structure of learning actions:

Transformation of the initial situation to highlight the generalized essence in it (for example, awareness of the conditions of a mathematical problem and identification of defining information blocks in it);

Transformation of the selected relation into an abstract model (formulation of the basic logical relations of the problem into an equation);

Correlation of the selected model with the general principle of solution (determination of universal laws and formulas, the use of which is necessary to solve the equation);

Identification and construction of a series of tasks of a given type (determining what type a given task belongs to);

Monitoring the implementation of previous actions (checking the correctness of the decision);

Assessment of mastering the general method of solution (solving a test problem or independently constructing a problem of this type).

Educational activities built according to this scheme ensure changes not only in the intellectual sphere of the student, but also in his personal behavior. This is due joint the nature of the student’s activities with the teacher and other students. Learning thus takes on a developmental character.

In educational psychology, an analysis of the “development-training” problem was carried out by L.S. Vygotsky. He developed the concept of zones of proximal development. The main postulate of the concept is that the child is an independent subject of activity, actively interacting with the external environment. The task of training is to create environmental conditions that provide the most progressive interaction. L.S. Vygotsky distinguishes two levels of development:

1. Zone relevant development, i.e. level of mental development that allows the child to carry out completely independent actions.

2. Zone nearest development, i.e. the level of activity of mental properties that allows you to carry out actions with the help of adults. This help is actually training.

It is active behavior in the “zone of proximal development” that allows the child to move to a new level of independent behavior. As learning progresses, the “zone of proximal development” becomes the “zone of actual development,” and a new level of mental activity, included in a more complex system of interaction with adults, forms a new “zone of proximal development.” Thus, cyclical learning “leads” development.

Modern views on the problem of developmental education are based on the concept of L.S. Vygotsky. Different authors consider different aspects of development. In the “school of creativity” technology, the emphasis is on the development of special creative abilities. One of the classical theories of developmental education is a specifically organized system of education, in which, through comparison, differentiation and induction, the child finds the correct knowledge. An important point in this process is the inclusion of the child’s emotional level. Interest in learning activities (caused by its specific organization) activates a cognitive need, which becomes dominant in the child. Cognitive need belongs to the category of unsatisfiable needs. Her satisfaction evokes positive emotions that activate interest. It, in turn, stimulates further implementation of educational activities. This is how purposeful development occurs. I.S. Yakimanskaya proposed the concept of “personally-oriented developmental training.” It focuses on the formation of a child’s subjective experience of life. Selectiveness of attitude towards the surrounding world ensures unique personal development. The teacher’s task is to help the child self-determinate, self-actualize, and reveal himself as much as possible. This is the essence of developmental influence. All of these concepts are based on the active, active nature of developmental learning. Active interaction child leads to internal changes not only in the cognitive sphere, but also child's personality.

Particular attention in the modern school attracts the problem of the relationship between training - development - education. The question of external influence on the development process has traditionally been related to the field of education. From the point of view of modern conceptual ideas about the essence of the learning process, it is not entirely correct to raise the question of the influence of upbringing and training on the development. Education and training are a single process aimed at shaping the individual experience of the subject. In traditional ideas, education was assigned to activities aimed at forming a system of scientific knowledge, and upbringing was assigned to activities aimed at the formation of personal and moral attitudes. A modern approach to the organization of educational activities within the framework of humanistic technologies, models of personal growth and free classes makes it possible to more adequately interpret the real situation of personality formation and development in conceptual schemes. At the same time, in everyday life these two concepts continue to be “separated,” which is reflected in the general ideas about “school education” and “family education.”

So, education is the same training, but not in scientific knowledge, but in moral categories, social skills and community norms, traditions and rituals. The result of such formative influence should be a socialized personality. The process of education is subject to all the laws of learning. The fundamental methodological basis of the education system remains the concept of L.S. Vygotsky about the “zone of proximal development”. Education is, first of all, the formation of a holistic and self-sufficient personality. The importance of the individual personal development of each student is undeniable in the development of society. Modern, most civilized views on this issue are implemented primarily in the concepts of the humanistic direction. On their basis in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, “personal growth schools” have become widespread, the essence of which is to increase attention specifically to the process of personal formation; the efforts of teachers, programs and methods used are aimed at this. Considering the uniqueness of the child’s personality, the question of individual approach (individual principle) in training and education.

An individual approach can be considered as a teaching principle that focuses on the individual characteristics of the child and requires the creation of psychological and pedagogical conditions for the development of his unique personality. The problem of individualization is one of the oldest in educational psychology. From the point of view of the uniqueness of the individual, the educational system must be adapted to each child. The teacher interacts with only one student. From the point of view of mass education, the education system should be extremely universal. A teacher teaches a group of children at the same time. These two contradictory tasks in real teaching practice enter into a compromise relationship. For example, a teacher groups his students by ability into “strong,” “average,” and “weak.” It varies the tasks, requirements and pace of learning activities depending on the group they are aimed at. Thus, while maintaining the requirements of the program, the teacher partly adapts it to the capabilities of specific children.

The first attempt to put this idea on a scientific basis was the Dalton Plan, developed in 1919 by the American educator E. Parkhurst. It was a purely pedagogical technology, in which students worked according to an individual program, independently, each at their own pace. A modern version of the “Dalton Plan,” but improved in a humanistic direction, is implemented in the “free class theory.” The domestic scientifically based technology of an individual approach is presented in the concept of I.S. Yakimanskaya. For each student a individual educational program. It must take into account both the level of abilities and the personality of the child quite subtly. Similar developments are presented in the “technology of individualized learning” by Inge Unt and the “adaptive learning system” by A.S. Granitskaya.

One of the most important goals of an individual approach to a child is the construction of an adequate “I-concept”. “I-concept” is a relatively stable system of ideas about oneself, on the basis of which a child builds his relationships with others. A child’s self-perception is a determining factor in the development of his personality and the success of educational activities. A child who perceives himself as successful, capable, and in control of the situation is formed into a self-confident, purposeful, balanced person. In the opposite case, we see a depressed, complex, passive, often embittered person. To form and then maintain a student’s self-confidence, the ability to withstand failures, and an optimistic assessment of one’s capabilities is one of the tasks of the teacher and a requirement of educational activities. It is very important to form in a child a healthy sense of his place in the world. To solve this problem, it is necessary to proceed from the following rules when implementing an individual approach:

The student must be treated with respect, constantly emphasizing his self-worth;

The totality of the listed rules applied to a specific student will ensure the creation of a sense of personal significance and his own positive social status. An important point is the formation creative conformism, those. acceptance by the student of different points of view on the same issue as having the right to exist.

The strategy of an adult influencing a child includes three stages. At the first stage, the child focuses on the “closest” adult, perceiving him as a role model. On the second, the child perceives any adult as an equal partner. In the third, the child critically evaluates the adult world, choosing his own example to follow. Educational influences must be built taking into account the stages of the child’s behavior. You cannot build your relationship with a student on the basis of your own unquestioned authority and unquestioning obedience. It is necessary to provide him with relative freedom both in his educational activities and in his views on the world.

Modern cognitive linguistics is a branch of the science of language in which, by analyzing the semantics of linguistic units, the ways of human cognition (cognition) of the surrounding world are studied. Cognitive linguistics examines the nature of the conceptual sphere, concepts, and methods of their verbalization.

A concept is a unit of thinking, a quantum of structured knowledge. A person thinks in concepts, connecting them in his mind. Concepts exist in the cognitive consciousness of a person without a mandatory connection with a word. Words, phrases, detailed statements and descriptions act as a means of objectification and verbalization of concepts in case of communicative necessity.

If certain concepts are communicatively relevant and become a regular subject of discussion in society, then they receive a standard linguistic unit for verbalization. If not, they remain non-verbalized, and if necessary, they are verbalized using descriptive means [Popova, Sternin 2007: 150]. Words and other ready-made linguistic means in the language system exist for those concepts that have communicative relevance, that is, they are necessary for communication and are often used in communicative exchange.

Studying the actualization aspect of a word involves considering the problem of meaning and understanding. The most relevant theory for explaining these issues is the theory of R.I. Pavilionis on the relationship between the conceptual system and the meaning of linguistic expressions. By a conceptual system, the author understands a continuously constructed system of information (opinions and knowledge) that an individual has about the actual or possible world. The main properties of the conceptual system are continuity (continuity) and the sequence of introducing concepts. The process of understanding, according to Pavilionis, is a process of formation of meanings, or concepts, which is based on the perceptual (perception) and conceptual (produced by the mind) selection of an object from the environment of other objects by giving this object a certain meaning, or concept, as its mental representation [there same: 383].

Understanding speech works involves constructing a corresponding structure of meanings, or concepts, considered as interpreters of their content. The result of interpretation is a structure of concepts that is interpreted by other concepts of the system. Such an interpretation of objects in a given system is the construction in it of information about a certain world, a certain picture of the world [ibid.: 206].

The meaningfulness of linguistic expressions is considered as a question about the possibility of constructing the structure of concepts in a certain conceptual system, about the possibility of constructing a certain “picture of the world.” A linguistic expression is considered meaningful in a given conceptual system if the conceptual structure corresponding to this expression is interpreted by the set of its concepts. The result is the understanding of a linguistic expression by a native speaker. Since the essence of interpretation lies in attributing a certain meaning to an object, different interpretations of the same linguistic expression are possible in different conceptual systems, i.e. There are several possible interpretations of it.

Modern linguocognitive research shows the possibilities of natural language as a means of access to the human consciousness, its conceptual sphere, to the content and structure of concepts as units of thinking. Linguistic methods used to describe the lexical and grammatical semantics of language units become methods of linguocognitive research. Cognitive linguistics studies the semantics of units that represent (objectify, verbalize, externalize) one or another concept in language [Anthology of Concepts 2007: 7]. The study of the semantics of linguistic units that objectify concepts allows one to gain access to the content of concepts as mental units.

In the act of speech, the communicatively relevant part of the concept is verbalized. The study of the semantics of linguistic units that verbalize a concept is the way to describe the verbalized part of the concept. The reasons for verbalization or lack of verbalization of a concept are purely communicative. The presence or absence of verbalization of a concept does not affect the reality of its existence in consciousness as a unit of thinking.

The presence of a large number of nominations for a particular concept indicates a high nominative density of this part of the language system, which reflects the relevance of the verbalized concept for the consciousness of the people.

In case of communicative necessity, a concept can be verbalized in various ways (lexical, phraseological, syntactic, etc.).

The method of semantic-cognitive analysis assumes that in the process of linguo-cognitive research we move from the content of meanings to the content of concepts during a special stage of description - cognitive interpretation.

The use of acquired cognitive knowledge to explain phenomena and processes in the semantics of language, in-depth study of lexical and grammatical semantics is carried out within the framework of cognitive semasiology.

The research is carried out in several stages.

First, the lexical meaning and internal form of the word representing the concept are analyzed.

Then the synonymous rows of the lexeme – a representative of the concept – are identified.

The third stage is a description of ways to categorize the concept in the linguistic picture of the world.

The fourth stage is the determination of methods of conceptualization as a secondary rethinking of the corresponding lexeme, the study of conceptual metaphor and metonymy.

Fifth stage – scenarios are explored. A scenario is an event unfolding in time and/or space, presupposing the presence of a subject, object, goal, conditions of occurrence, time and place of action [Anthology of Concepts 2007: 15].

Using this method, the following concepts were studied in the “Anthology of Concepts”: life, will, friendship, soul, heart, mind, reason, law, health, beauty, love, hatred, deception, freedom, fear, melancholy, surprise, form, language, sin, money, road, life and etc.

In the concept sphere of every nation there are many concepts that have strong national specificity. Often such concepts are difficult or even impossible to convey in another language. Many of these concepts “guide” the perception of reality, the understanding of current phenomena and events, and determine the national characteristics of the communicative behavior of the people. For a correct understanding of the thoughts and behavior of another people, identifying and describing the content of such concepts is extremely important [Popova, Sternin 2007: 156].

American researcher Franz Boas noted that languages ​​differ not only from the phonetic point of view, but they also differ in the groups of ideas recorded in these languages.

A clear reflection of the character and worldview of a people is the language, in particular its lexical composition. Analysis of Russian vocabulary allows researchers to draw conclusions about the peculiarities of the Russian vision of the world. Such an analysis leads to discussions about the “Russian mentality” (a tendency to extremes, a feeling of the unpredictability of life, the insufficiency of a logical and rational approach to it, a tendency to “moralize,” a tendency to passivity and even fatalism, a feeling that life is not under the control of human efforts, etc.) an objective basis, without which such reasoning often looks like superficial speculation [Bulygina, Shmelev 1997:481].

Of course, not all lexical units equally carry information about the Russian character and worldview. The following lexical areas are the most revealing:

Words corresponding to certain aspects of universal philosophical concepts: truth, truth, duty, obligation, freedom, will, good, good and etc.;

Concepts specially highlighted in the Russian linguistic picture of the world: fate, soul, pity, share, fate, destiny and etc.;

Unique Russian concepts: melancholy, daring and etc.;

- “small words” as an expression of national character: maybe, I suppose, it’s visible, well and etc.

A special role in characterizing the “Russian mentality” is played by the so-called “small words (in the words of L.V. Shcherba), i.e. modal words, particles, interjections. This includes the famous Russian word maybe. Maybe always prospective, looking to the future and expressing hope for a favorable outcome for the speaker. More often maybe used as an excuse for carelessness when it comes to the hope not so much that some favorable event will happen, but rather that some extremely undesirable consequence will be avoided: Perhaps they will somehow lead to no good; Perhaps, yes, I suppose, at least give it up; Perhaps yes, I suppose - a bad help; Hold on to the chance before it breaks.

Installation on maybe is usually intended to justify the passivity of the subject of the attitude, his reluctance to take any decisive action (for example, precautionary measures). An important idea, also reflected in maybe- this is an idea of ​​​​the unpredictability of the future: “you can’t foresee everything anyway, so it’s useless to try to insure against possible troubles

“Little words” usually prove difficult to translate into other languages. This does not mean that no speaker of another language can ever be guided by the internal attitudes expressed in these words. But the absence of a simple and idiomatic means of expressing an attitude is due to the fact that it is not one of the culturally significant stereotypes. Thus, a native English speaker can “act on maybe“, but the important thing is that the language as a whole “did not consider it necessary” to have a special modal word to denote this attitude [Bulygina, Shmelev 1997:494].

The cognitive aspect of the goal of teaching foreign languages ​​is associated with such categories as knowledge, thinking and understanding processes involved in the student’s familiarization with a foreign language and the culture of its native people. When determining the essence of the cognitive aspect of the goal of teaching foreign languages, it is important to proceed from the understanding that language reflects the interaction between psychological, communicative, functional and cultural factors

(see: Chenki A., 1997, pp. 340-369).

It is known from cognitive science that human thinking is a process of processing (with the help of an important “processor” - the human cognitive system) and generating knowledge. Knowledge functions as an “impersonal phenomenon”, as a certain “field of meanings” to which human consciousness “partakes” through anamnesis. This process of cognition is a transition from a state of “ignorance” to a state of “knowledge” and involves “transforming a thing in itself into a thing for us,” i.e. destruction of the natural reality of an object - “tearing it out” from its usual habitat - abstraction from the unimportant characteristics of the object being studied - anthropomorphic interpretation of what is perceived.”

In epistemology 1 and cognitive science, there are two main types of knowledge: declarative and procedural. Declarative knowledge refers to knowledge (“ What-knowledge") acquired by an individual as a result of his social experience (empirical knowledge from the professional sphere or from everyday social and personal life: for example, food, transport) and in the learning process (academic knowledge from the field of scientific and technical education). This category of knowledge is not necessarily directly related to language and culture, but it is important for the implementation of verbal communication. Procedural knowledge (“ How-knowledge") is a certain sequence of actions that should be performed. In other words, procedural knowledge is some general instructions about actions in certain situations (for example, instructions for using a household appliance). If the first group of knowledge can be verified as true and false, then the second can be assessed only on the basis of the success or failure of the action algorithm.

Regardless of what type of knowledge we are talking about, it can be divided into three groups: 1) individual knowledge, which is the property of the active subject, his speech and other activities; 2) cumulative collective knowledge-experience, which is formed and functions in a certain linguocultural community according to the laws of mental activity and interactions in super-large systems; 3) collective knowledge “registered” in the products of various human activities, which reflects only part of what is included in the first concept of knowledge (see: Zalevskaya A.A., 1996, p. 26). It follows that human linguistic knowledge does not exist on its own. They, being formed through his personal experience and refraction and being under the control of norms and assessments established in society, function in the context of his diverse experience. Therefore, for a native speaker to recognize a word means to include it in the context of previous experience, i.e. “in the internal context of diverse knowledge and relationships established in the corresponding culture as the basis for mutual understanding

1 Epistemology there is actually a theory of knowledge.

in the course of communication and interaction” (ibid., p. 26). The internal context is most naturally connected with individual knowledge, with access to a person’s individual picture of the world.

In the process of forming an individual picture of the world, a student studying a foreign language is based, firstly, on the cognitive means of his own culture (see: Baranov A.G., Shcherbina T.S., 1991), attracted to understand the means of a foreign culture, in secondly, on new knowledge about a foreign culture, formed in the course of its cognition, and, finally, on new knowledge about one’s own culture, created during the cognition of a foreign culture (see: Demyankov V.3., 1995). In turn, as already noted when describing the essence of language education as a result, the knowledge used in encoding and decoding any message is by no means limited to knowledge about the language. Only a body of knowledge about the world, the social context of utterances, knowledge about the features of discourse and the laws of its planning and management, and much more

(see: Gerasimov V.I., Petrov V.V., 1995, p. 6) allow a person to master the “global semantic project” when constructing and perceiving foreign language utterances. The “global semantic project” is associated with the comprehension of the mental, spiritual essence of the speaker of the language being studied, the world in which he lives, and taking it into account in situations of intercultural communication.

To study and present knowledge, scientists use various knowledge structures, the most common ones include frames . Frames are deep invariants of certain fragments of knowledge (see: Kamenskaya O.L., 1990, p. 314), certain means of organizing experience and tools of cognition. Just frames, as he believes

C. Fillmore, are innate (for example, knowledge of the characteristic features of the human face). Other frames are acquired from experience or learning (for example, the meaning of social institutions). A special case is represented by those Frames whose existence completely depends on the linguistic expressions associated with them (for example, units of measurement, calendar, etc.). It follows that a person’s linguistic competence interacts with other types of knowledge and skills. This fact should be taken into account when teaching foreign languages, during which it is justified and inevitable to go beyond the boundaries of actual communicative knowledge and skills.

Appeal to frames as a supra-linguistic level, to an extra-linguistic situation always occurs when comprehending symbolic expressions. It is no coincidence that Charles Fillmore associates linguistically determined characteristics of the structure of knowledge with frames: “We can use the term frame, when we mean the specific lexical and grammatical support that a given language has for naming and describing categories and relationships found in schemes” (Fillmore Ch., 1983, p. 110). Therefore, when speaking about the cognitive aspect of the goal of teaching foreign languages, one should keep in mind the need and importance of forming in the minds of students basic cognitive structures that provide them with the perception and understanding of the language and world of another sociocultural community. “The essence of teaching intercultural communication is the construction in the cognitive system of the recipient (learner) of secondary constructions - knowledge that would correlate with the knowledge about the world of the speaker (a representative of another sociocultural community)” (Khaleeva I.I., 1989, p. 162) This knowledge form fragments of the linguistic picture of the world, that is, from “linguistic consciousness directly connected with the associative-verbal network of language,” and fragments of the conceptual picture.

The process of formation of basic cognitive structures is accompanied by a complication of connections established in the student’s mind between the elements of the linguocultures he assimilates. Due to this, its development is carried out, since mastering foreign languages ​​and cultures leads to a change in character; cognitive activity of a student, whose language development has a modifying effect on his cognitive development, on the formation of linguistic consciousness.

Penetration into a foreign world, a foreign culture is a complex and multifaceted process, which is accompanied by a period of formation of the student’s internal experience of sociocultural images. This can be explained by the fact that understanding involves not only the processing and interpretation of perceived data, but also the activation and use of internal, cognitive information, i.e. information about cognitive presuppositions (Dijk van T.A., Kintsch W., 1988, p. 158). Thus, in the process of a person’s perception of a foreign language utterance or a foreign fact of action and other information available to him (about specific events, situations and context, as well as cognitive presuppositions) are the basis for the formation in his memory of a mental representation of the discourse. In this case, he may have expectations of what will be said or presented before he actually hears or sees it, and this may make it easier for him to understand when he actually receives the relevant external information. “At each stage there is no fixed order of succession between the perceived data and their interpretation: interpretations can first be constructed and only later compared with the perceived data” (ibid., p. 158). Therefore, the cognitive aspect of the goal of teaching foreign languages ​​is associated with the development in students of the ability to flexibly use various types of information, the ability to effectively construct mental representations even if the interpreted information is incomplete. The main thing is that understanding is not a passive construction of a representation of a certain linguistic image, but part of an interactive process in which a person who perceives a particular sociolinguocultural phenomenon actively interprets it. At the same time, the strategic analysis of the perceived or generated text depends not only on textual characteristics, but also on the characteristics of the student, his goals and knowledge about the world. “This means that the reader tries to reconstruct not only the intended meaning of the text, expressed by the author in various ways in the text or in the context, but also the meaning that is most relevant from the point of view of his interests and goals” (ibid., p. 164). And here factors such as imaginative perception, physical interaction, mental images and the role of realities in culture play a special role. J. Lakoff writes: “All these considerations support the point that our conceptual system depends on and is directly related to our physical and cultural experience” (Lakoff J. , 1988, p. 48). And further: “...our conceptual system is based on physical, social and other types of experience and is understood through them...” (ibid., p. 49).

The above gives grounds to assert that initially ideas about foreign language reality arise under the influence of the culture of the native language and are comprehended by the student of a non-native language solely as a result of staging his own life experience. One’s own experience, generalized impression, and developed associations create the basis for a characteristic opinion, behavior, or attitude. The method of perception that is formed when confronted with images of one’s native culture is used as a category of knowledge of reality, that is, as a cognitive category.

Structure and semantics constitute one part of a complex phenomenon - text. The other part lies in the consciousness and memory of a person. Only when both of these parts interact does the process of complete perception and understanding of a foreign language text by a non-native speaker occur. Understanding is a complex process. It includes not only the verbal text, but also what accompanies it and what conditions and stimulates it, i.e. background knowledge. At the same time, cognitive motives and the student’s cognitive activity have the greatest impact on the quality of mastering someone else’s linguistic culture and act as the main stimulus for the development of his individual picture of the world, which is based on knowledge about the world, knowledge from various fields, knowledge inherent in a particular culture and/or having universal character. As research shows, among the cognitive motives that encourage students to learn a non-native language and culture, the need for information about the cultural specifics of the country of the language being studied stands out (see: Kareeva L. A., 2000).

Cognition of another culture is carried out in the process of perceiving someone else’s nationally specific picture of the world, interpreting it with the help of images of one’s national consciousness. National-cultural specific fragments of an unfamiliar culture encountered along this path can be perceived as strange, alien, unusual. In this sense, as shown in the dissertation research of M. A. Bogatyreva (1998), it is unacceptable when in the educational process of a foreign language one approaches foreign cultural reality with ready-made measures and tailors it according to one’s own perception. This approach almost always leads to sociocultural bias, alienation, leading to a defensive reaction - a retreat to one’s own national values, or a devaluation of “one’s own” and a naive admiration for everything foreign. Teaching foreign languages ​​is designed to reduce such negative aspects of intercultural communication. Therefore, the interpretation of the life, attitude and uniqueness of another people should take place against the background of those life events in which schoolchildren take part. It is this approach that will develop the student’s worldview and prepare him to understand himself as a bearer of national values, to understand the relationships and interdependence of his people and the people of the country of the language being studied in solving global problems.

As noted above, the cognitive aspect of the goal of teaching foreign languages ​​is also associated with the formation in students of a broad understanding of the achievements of national cultures (their own and foreign language) in the development of universal human culture and the role of the native language and culture in the mirror of foreign culture. In this case, a special role is played by the provision that, while studying a foreign language, students receive a practical school of dialectics, because the work of comparing their native language and the foreign language being studied makes it possible to free themselves “from the captivity of their native language” (Shcherba L.V., 1947, p. 46). By studying a foreign language, a student learns in depth the ways of forming thoughts and thereby gets to know his native language better. As rightly noted by L.V. Shcherba, a foreign language, acting as a standard for comparison with the language being studied, allows the student to realize that there are different ways of expressing thoughts than in their native language, and other connections between form and meaning. This statement, with a certain amount of amendment, also applies to the student’s mastery of a foreign culture.

By getting acquainted with a foreign language, a student learns:

a) world culture, national cultures and social subcultures of the peoples of the countries of the language being studied and their reflection in the way and lifestyle of people;

b) the spiritual heritage of countries and peoples, their historical and cultural memory;

c) ways to achieve intercultural understanding.

In his mind, a synthesis of knowledge is carried out both about the specifics of his native culture and foreign culture, and about the generality of knowledge about cultures and communication. However, in order to achieve this, the student must also master verbal, educational, including research, strategies for comprehending someone else's linguistic culture in comparison with his own (procedural knowledge). Therefore, the cognitive aspect of the goal of teaching foreign languages ​​also means developing in students the skills and abilities to use (creatively, economically and purposefully) rational techniques for mastering foreign languages ​​and cultures

(see: Bimmel P., 1997). From this point of view, this aspect is the actual developmental aspect of learning, and its content is associated primarily with the formation of students’ linguistic/speech abilities and mental processes that underlie the successful mastery of foreign language communicative activities. In other words, we are talking about the development of a student’s existential competence as one of the components of general competence. This competence includes the individual characteristics of a person, his character traits, belief system (for example, the image of himself and others), introversion and extroversion, i.e. all properties and qualities that distinguish a person in the process of social interaction. Existential competence is sensitive to the areas of intercultural communication, because a person’s readiness and desire to enter into this communication, his attitude towards his foreign communication partner ultimately determine the quality and results of mutual understanding and interaction.

Existential competence is a dynamic concept. Its components exist only in movement, in development, and this development is carried out only in the process of one or another practical and theoretical activity (see: Teplov B. M., 1961, pp. 13, 14). Moreover, on the one hand, this competence is the result of communicative activity, and on the other hand, it determines the success of its implementation.

In domestic linguodidactics and methods of teaching foreign languages, it is proven that existential competence, or more precisely, its components - individual psychological characteristics of a person, conducive to the acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities in the field of a foreign language and their use in practical speech activity, are actually the so-called linguistic / speech abilities.

It has been experimentally proven that the common components of language abilities are well-developed mechanical memory, a high level of development of thinking, and the degree of development of speech skills developed on the basis of the native language. In the process of performing a certain type of speech activity, it is necessary to have sustained attention.

In the domestic methodology, attempts have been made to establish the role and place of each component in the structure of abilities for foreign language speech activity, i.e. identify leading and auxiliary ones among them. The idea was expressed that the main component of the structure of linguistic ability is a certain degree of development of mental operations: analysis - synthesis, speech guessing. As indicators of mental processes related directly to speech activity, the volume of operative memory and probabilistic forecasting were called. At the same time, the most significant, especially at the initial stage of teaching foreign languages, in the overall balance of individual psychological characteristics affecting the success of mastering foreign languages ​​and performing foreign language speech activity, is the indicator of the volume of operative memory (see: Zimnyaya I. A., 1970, p. 46). However, the practice of teaching foreign languages ​​indicates that the success of training and education using the means of the subject is determined by how consistently both leading and auxiliary components of abilities are taken into account.

In the methodology of teaching foreign languages, there are a number of independent studies devoted to the search for optimal ways to develop the language abilities of students, and on this basis - to improve the quality of practical proficiency in the language being studied (see: Galskova N.D., 2000). Despite the fact that most of these studies were carried out in relation to the conditions of teaching foreign languages ​​at a university, their main results can be extrapolated to school conditions. These results include, in particular, the statement that the more properties and characteristics of a student’s personality are taken into account in the educational process, the more successful the process of mastering communicative competence is. Taking into account the individual psychological characteristics of students involves not only “adapting” the educational process to their capabilities. We are also talking about the optimal change and development of these characteristics, about the targeted formation of the individual characteristics of each student under the influence of a specially organized training.

Effective mastery by students of a new language and culture is determined by the degree of development of their skills:

1) organize your learning activities (for example, work individually, in pairs, in groups; check, evaluate and correct your work or the work of a fellow student, etc.);

2) activate intellectual processes (for example, recognize this or that language phenomenon, compare this phenomenon with a similar one in the native language, etc.);

3) prepare for the educational process and actively participate in it (for example, take notes, draw up a plan, use a dictionary, etc.);

4) organize communicative activities (for example, plan your statement, formulate your thoughts using a limited set of linguistic means, use gestures and facial expressions in oral communication, etc.).

It is important that the formation and improvement of these skills is carried out in close connection with the development of communication skills, with work on various aspects of the language. The student must realize and develop his own individual style of learning activity (for example, individual ways and techniques of mastering lexical or grammatical phenomena, cultural phenomena), master knowledge that makes it easier for him, for example, to understand texts (subject knowledge from other areas) or adequately perceive, for example, structural features of a particular grammatical phenomenon (knowledge of a grammatical rule). All this as a whole should allow schoolchildren to master certain strategies for working on language, which can be conditionally divided into two groups.

The first group includes strategies aimed directly at working with language material. These strategies allow the student to:

a) correctly select the necessary linguistic phenomena (using, for example, anticipation, putting forward and testing hypotheses, revealing the meanings of words by context, etc.);

b) optimize the processes of mastering language material (for example, highlighting key words, underlining/highlighting any words, sentences, etc. in the text, searching for language patterns, using speech samples, etc.);

c) improve the functioning of memory (finding/selecting appropriate contexts for the use of a particular linguistic phenomenon, using clarity, repetition, recombination, etc.).

The second group includes the so-called metacognitive strategies. They consist of students’ abilities to plan their educational activities, monitor and evaluate the success of their results. The student’s reflexive abilities, which we wrote about above, are of particular importance. All that remains to be added here is the following.

In general, if we talk about the cognitive aspect of teaching foreign languages, we should keep in mind that reflexive abilities associated with the experience of learning someone else’s ethnolinguistic culture play an important role and have special potential (Diagram 10). If the process of cognition is of a so-called centrifugal nature, since the student, acquiring linguistic and cultural experience and becoming familiar with new facts, phenomena and processes, breaks out of the “captivity” of his monoculture, reflection of the acquired experience has a centripetal component: the acquired new experience is comprehended from the point of view of its significance, novelty, relevance, etc. for the student’s personality.

As is clear from the definition of discourse, it is a social phenomenon. Communication between two or more people is already a social process. We speak in order to somehow influence the interlocutor - to get some action from him, to teach him something, to entertain him, to make him empathize with us, etc. In any case, it is interaction, and interaction between individuals is exactly where society begins.

In every act of communication there is a speaker and an addressee - certain social roles. These roles change: if Masha and Petya are talking, then at some point in time Masha is the speaker, Petya is the addressee, and at the next moment - vice versa. The communicative act also includes another significant social role - the audience. Vasya can be present during the conversation between Masha and Petya, without being either the speaker or the addressee, but at the same time still influencing the course of the discourse. The social roles of the speaker, addressee and audience also interact with other social roles that these same individuals have - gender, ethnic, age, status, professional, etc. All of these additional roles can also influence the nature and structure of discourse.

Speaker and addressee are not just abstract social roles. In every real act of communication they are real people, representatives of the species Homo sapiens. Their discursive interaction - the generation and understanding of discourse - is carried out with the help of the most important organ: the brain. And here the question inevitably arises about the cognitive aspect of discourse. The term “cognitive” means “related to information, knowledge, thought, consciousness.” All information that the speaker conveys to the addressee is first formed in the speaker’s cognitive system, and then - most often not in an absolutely identical form - is reproduced in the mind of the addressee.

Discourse is always some projection of the cognitive representation underlying thought. Language activity is very dependent on cognitive phenomena, which are responsible not only for language, but in general for any meaningful activity, such as memory, attention, decision making. This is easy to show with a simple example. As we know from psychology, one of the main features of attention is that it is an extremely limited resource. A person can never pay attention to everything at once; at each moment, attention is concentrated only on a few objects. Similarly, a sentence usually has only one, two or three participants, expressed by nouns or pronouns ( Petya is sleeping. Vasya kissed Mata. Katya met Misha in the store). This fact is directly related to the limitation on the amount of human attention.

Thus, discourse is both a social and a cognitive phenomenon. Discourse is sensitive both to what happens inside one head (the cognitive aspect) and to what happens between two or more individuals (the social aspect). At the same time, these two aspects are not strictly opposed. After all, a thought in an individual’s brain is formed on the basis and taking into account interaction, and interaction is possible only because the internal cognitive apparatus works in the participants’ heads. The speaker constantly models the state of consciousness of his communication partner, and this affects the structure of the discourse generated by the speaker. The phenomenon of such modeling is known under various names, including “addressee factor” and “model of mind” (eng. theoiy of mind). One of the basic features of humans that distinguishes them from other animal species is the understanding that another person is also a cognitive subject with his own feelings, thoughts and intentions, and this feature is a constant companion of any discursive interaction.