ATTENTION FEATURES IN PRESCHOOL AND YOUNGER SCHOOL AGE

Abstract

In modern times, in the conditions of the rapid development of society, the multifaceted development of children, deep knowledge, development of cognitive processes, increase of receptivity, and the formation of a harmonious mental and emotional personality are even more critical. The article discusses the problem of cognitive processes, particularly attention, among preschool and primary school children. This attention feature plays an important role in the development of cognitive processes; for example, if a child has well-developed attention, he can remember the memorized material and analyze what he hears and thinks. Therefore, emphasizing the role of attention, in this article, we have discussed the approaches of several well-known psychologists regarding the development of the features of cognitive processes of children of preschool and primary school age, and then we have presented a study aimed at the stability and efficiency of attention of children of the specified age, which was carried out in the city of Glendale, United States of America in the educational center named “Russian School of Mathematics”.120 children of preschool and primary school age participated in the research. We used the methods “Find and Delete”, “Place Signs”, and “Landolt’s Circles”, which are intended for children of preschool and primary school age. During the implementation of attention methods and in the process of calculating the results, we noticed that there are differences between the efficiency and stability of attention, although this data is lost in the formula for calculating the final results of the test. Since one of our tasks is also to study the dynamics of the development of cognitive processes, we found it appropriate to present the results separately. As we can see from the results, attention efficiency is more developed than stability at an early age. For example, if a child is instructed to draw balls, then the child almost does not make mistakes, does not paint the bucket in the place of the ball, but quickly gets tired and leaves the work half-finished. This refers to an early age. Later, we notice that the effectiveness gradually decreases, and the stability of the results increases. We explain this phenomenon in the following way: after attending school, the child is forced to follow the instructions of the teacher for a long time, as a result of which, due to age characteristics, the arbitrariness of attention develops, which is the logical reason for the development of stability, but at the same time the child loses his ability to work, often makes mistakes, because arbitrary behaviorism forced, the child wants to get rid of it as quickly as possible. These forced situations include sitting in class, listening to the teacher for a long time, and doing homework, so he is distracted and cannot work effectively—another reason why new approaches are needed in organizing children’s activities.