Other tests on the subject of Psychology
NOU MURMANSK HUMANITARIAN INSTITUTE
PSYCHOLOGY FACULTY
EXTRAMURAL
TEST
ON GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY
TOPIC: PRESENTATION. IMAGINATION.
Completed by: STUDENT
2 COURSES, F-TA PSYCHOLOGY
CORRESPONDENCE OFFICE
I. N. Borodkina
Checked by: TEACHER
M. A. Semenova
Murmansk 2009
Introduction
The concept of representation, mechanisms of the emergence of representations
Main characteristics of views
View functions
Classification and types of representations
View operations
The concept of imagination, mechanisms of the imagination process
Physiological bases of imagination
The role of imagination in human life
Types of imagination
Imagination operations
Imagination and creativity
Conclusion
Literature
Introduction
We obtain primary information about the world around us through sensation and perception. The excitement that occurs in our sense organs does not disappear without a trace at the very moment when the stimuli stop acting on them. After that, the so-called sequential images arise and remain for some time. However, the role of these images for the mental life of a person is relatively insignificant. Much more important is the fact that even later long time after we have perceived an object, the image of this object may be again accidentally or intentionally evoked by us. This phenomenon is called performance.
The concept of representation, mechanisms for the emergence of representations
Representation is mental process reflections of objects or phenomena that are not currently perceived, but are recreated based on our previous experience.
The representation is based on the perception of objects that took place in the past. There are several types of views. Firstly, these are representations of memory, that is, representations that arose on the basis of our direct perception in the past of an object or phenomenon. Secondly, these are representations of the imagination. At first glance, this type of representation does not correspond to the definition of the concept of representation, because in our imagination we display something that we have never seen, but this is only at first glance. Representations of the imagination are formed on the basis of information received in past perceptions and its more or less creative processing. The richer the past experience, the brighter and more complete the corresponding representation can be.
Concepts do not arise by themselves, but as a result of our practical activities. At the same time, representations are of great importance not only for the processes of memory or imagination, they are extremely important for all mental processes that ensure human cognitive activity. The processes of perception, thinking, written speech always associated with representations, as well as memory, which stores information and through which representations are formed.
Main characteristics of views
Views have their own characteristics. First of all, the views are characterized by clarity . Representations are sensually visual images of reality, and this is their closeness to the images of perception. But perceptual images are a reflection of those objects of the material world that are perceived at the moment, while representations are reproduced and processed images of objects that were perceived in the past.
The next characteristic of representations is fragmentation. The views are full of gaps, some parts and features are vividly presented, others are very vague, and still others are completely absent. For example, when we imagine someone's face, we clearly and distinctly reproduce only individual features, those on which, as a rule, we fixed our attention.
An equally important characteristic of representations is their instability and inconstancy. So, any evoked image, be it any object or someone's image, will disappear from the field of your consciousness, no matter how hard you try to keep it. And you will have to make another effort to call it up again. Moreover, the views are very fluid and volatile. In turn, one or the other details of the reproduced image come to the fore.
The images that a person operates with include not only previously perceived objects and phenomena. The content of the images can also become what he never perceived directly: pictures of the distant past or future; a place where he has never been and never will be; creatures that do not exist, not only on Earth, but in general in the Universe. Images allow a person to go beyond the real world in time and space. It is these images, transforming, modifying human experience, that are the main characteristic of imagination.
Usually, imagination or fantasy does not mean exactly what is meant by these words in science. In everyday life, imagination or fantasy is called everything that is unreal, does not correspond to reality and that thus has no practical meaning. In fact, imagination, as the basis of all creative activity, is equally manifested resolutely in all directions. cultural lifemaking artistic, scientific and technical creativity possible.
Through sensations, perception and thinking, a person reflects the real properties of objects of the surrounding reality and acts in accordance with them in a specific situation. Through memory, he uses his past experiences. But human behavior can be determined not only by the current or past properties of the situation, but also by those that may be inherent in it in the future. Thanks to this ability in human consciousness images of objects appear that do not exist at the moment, but can subsequently be embodied in concrete objects. Ability to reflect the future and act as expected, i.e. imaginary, the situation is characteristic only of a person.
Imagination - the cognitive process of reflecting the future by creating new images based on the processing of images of perception, thinking and representations obtained in previous experience.
Through the imagination, images are created that have never been generally accepted by man in reality. The essence of imagination is to transform the world. This determines the most important role of imagination in the development of a person as an acting subject.
Imagination and thinking are processes that are similar in structure and function. L. S. Vygotsky called them "extremely related", noting the commonality of their origin and structure as psychological systems. He considered imagination as a necessary, inalienable moment of thinking, especially creative, since the processes of forecasting and anticipation are always included in thinking. In problem situations, a person uses thinking and imagination. The idea of \u200b\u200ba possible solution formed in the imagination strengthens the motivation of the search, and determines its direction. The more uncertain the problem situation is, the more unknown it is, the more significant the role of imagination becomes. It can be carried out with incomplete initial data, since it supplements them with products of its own creativity.
There is also a deep relationship between imagination and emotional-volitional processes. One of its manifestations is that when an imaginary image appears in a person's consciousness, he experiences true, real, and not imaginary emotions, which allows him to avoid unwanted influences and to bring the desired images to life. L. S. Vygotsky called this the law of "emotional reality of imagination"
For example, a person needs to cross a rough river by boat. In imagining that the boat might capsize, he experiences not imaginary, but real fear. This prompts him to choose a safer way of crossing.
Imagination can influence the strength of emotions and feelings experienced by a person. For example, people often experience a feeling of anxiety, worry about only imaginary, not real events. Changing the image of the imagination can reduce the level of anxiety, relieve tension. Representation of the experiences of another person helps the formation and manifestation of feelings of empathy and empathy towards him. In volitional actions, imagination end result activity encourages its implementation. The brighter the image of the imagination, the greater the motivating force, but at the same time the realism of the image also matters.
Imagination is a significant factor in personality development. Ideals as an imaginary image, which a person wants to imitate or to which he strives, serve as models for the organization of his life, personal and moral development.
Types of imagination
There are different kinds of imagination. By the degree of activity imagination can be passive and active. Passive imagination does not stimulate a person to take action. He is satisfied with the created images and does not seek to realize them in reality or draws images that, in principle, cannot be realized. In life, such people are called utopians, fruitless dreamers. NV Gogol, creating the image of Manilov, made his name a household name for this type of people. Activeimagination is the creation of images that are subsequently realized in practical actions and products of activity. Sometimes this requires a lot of effort and time from a person. Active imagination increases creative content and efficiency in other activities.
Productive
Imagination is called productive if its images contain a lot of new things (elements of fantasy). The products of such imagination are usually not like anything or very little like what is already known.
Reproductive
Reproductive is imagination, in the products of which there is much that is already known, although there are also some elements of the new. Such, for example, is the imagination of a novice poet, writer, engineer, artist, who at first create their creations according to well-known models, thereby learning professional skills.
Hallucinations
Hallucinations are products of the imagination, born of an altered (not normal) state of human consciousness. These conditions can occur for various reasons: illness, hypnosis, exposure to psychotropic substances such as drugs, alcohol, etc.
Dreams
Dreams are products of the imagination aimed at the desired future. Dreams contain more or less real and, in principle, realizable plans of a person. Dreams as a form of imagination are especially characteristic of young people, who still have a large part of their lives ahead of them.
Dreaming
Dreams are called peculiar dreams, which, as a rule, are divorced from reality and, in principle, are not realizable. Dreams occupy an intermediate position between dreams and hallucinations, but their difference from hallucinations is that dreams are products of the activity of a normal person.
Dreaming
Dreams have always been of particular interest and still are. At present, they are inclined to believe that the processes of information processing by the human brain can be reflected in dreams, and the content of dreams is not only functionally connected with these processes, but can include new valuable ideas and even discoveries.
Arbitrary and involuntary imagination
Imagination is connected in various ways with the will of a person, on the basis of which voluntary and involuntary imagination is distinguished. If images are created with weakened activity of consciousness, imagination is called involuntary... It takes place in a half-asleep state or in a dream, as well as in some disorders of consciousness. Arbitrary imagination is a deliberate, directed activity, performing which, a person is aware of its goals and motives. It is characterized by the deliberate creation of images. Activity and arbitrary imagination can be combined different ways... An example of an arbitrary passive imagination is dreams, when a person deliberately indulges in thoughts that it is unlikely to ever come true. Arbitrary active imagination is manifested in a long, purposeful search for the desired image, which is typical, in particular, for the activities of writers, inventors, and artists.
Recreational and creative imagination
In connection with past experience, two types of imagination are distinguished: recreational and creative. Re-creatingimagination is the creation of images of objects that were not previously perceived by a person in a complete form, although he is familiar with such objects or with their individual elements. The images are formed according to a verbal description, a schematic image - a drawing, a picture, a geographic map. In this case, the knowledge available with respect to these objects is used, which determines the predominantly reproductive nature of the created images. At the same time, they differ from memory representations in a great variety, flexibility, and dynamism of image elements. Creative imagination is the independent creation of new images that are embodied in the original products of various types of activity with minimal indirect reliance on past experience.
Realistic imagination
Drawing various images in their imagination, people always assess the possibility of their implementation in reality. Realistic imaginationtakes place if a person believes in reality and the possibility of embodying the created images. If he does not see such an opportunity, fantastic imagination takes place. There is no hard boundary between realistic and fantastic imagination. There are many cases when an image, born of a person's fantasy as completely unrealistic (for example, a hyperboloid invented by A.N. Tolstoy), later became a reality. Fantastic imagination is present in the role-playing games of children. It formed the basis of literary works of a certain genre - fairy tales, science fiction, “fantasy”.
With all the variety of types of imagination, they are characterized by common function, which determines their main importance in human life - anticipation of the future, an ideal representation of the result of an activity before it is achieved. Associated with it are other functions of the imagination - stimulating and planning. The images created in the imagination induce, stimulate a person to realize them in concrete actions. The transformative influence of imagination extends not only to the future activity of a person, but also to his past experience. Imagination promotes selectivity in its structuring and reproduction in accordance with the goals of the present and future. The creation of images of the imagination is carried out through complex processes of processing actual perceived information and memory representations. Just as in thinking, analysis and synthesis are the main processes or operations of the imagination. Through analysis, objects or ideas about them are divided into component parts, and with the help of synthesis, an integral image of the object is rebuilt. But unlike thinking in imagination, a person more freely handles the elements of objects, recreating new holistic images.
This is achieved using a set of processes specific to the imagination. The main ones are exaggeration(exaggeration) and understatement of real-life objects or their parts (for example, creating images of a giant, genie or Thumbelina); accentuation- emphasizing or exaggerating real-life objects or their parts (for example, Buratino's long nose, Malvina's blue hair); agglutination- the combination of various, really existing parts and properties of objects in unusual combinations (for example, the creation of fictional images of a centaur, a mermaid). The specificity of the imagination process is that they do not reproduce certain impressions in the same combinations and forms in which they were perceived and preserved in the form of past experience, but build new combinations and forms from them. This reveals a deep inner connection between imagination and creativity, which is always aimed at creating something new - material values, scientific ideas, or.
The relationship between imagination and creativity
There are different types of creativity: scientific, technical, literary, artistic and others. None of these types is possible without the participation of imagination. In its main function - anticipation of something that does not yet exist, it conditions the emergence of intuition, guesswork, insight as the central link in the creative process. For the scientist, imagination helps to see the studied phenomenon in a new light. In the history of science there are many examples of the emergence of images of the imagination, later realized in new ideas, great discoveries and inventions.
The English physicist M. Faraday, studying the interaction of conductors with current at a distance, imagined that they were surrounded by invisible lines like tentacles. This led him to discover ley lines and the phenomena of electromagnetic induction. The German engineer O. Lilienthal observed and analyzed the soaring flight of birds for a long time. The image of an artificial bird that appeared in his imagination served as the basis for the invention of the glider and the first flight on it.
When creating literary works, the writer realizes in the word the images of his aesthetic imagination. Their brightness, breadth and depth of the phenomena of reality covered by them are subsequently felt by the readers, and they evoke feelings of co-creation in them. L. N. Tolstoy wrote in his diaries that “in the perception of genuine works of art there is an illusion that a person does not perceive, but creates, it seems to him that it was he who produced such a wonderful thing ”.
The role of imagination is also great in pedagogical creativity. Its specificity is that the results teaching activities do not appear immediately, but after some, sometimes a long time. Their representation in the form of a model of the child's personality being formed, the way of his behavior and thinking in the future determines the choice of teaching and upbringing methods, pedagogical requirements and influences.
All people have different creativity abilities. Their formation is determined by a large number of different kinds of aspects. These include congenital inclinations, human activities, environmental characteristics, conditions of education and upbringing that affect the development of a person's mental processes and personality traits that contribute to creative achievements.
An image can be a product of perception, then it is formed by direct impact on the senses.
However, there are images that arise without the direct involvement of the senses. Namely, the image can be taken from memory, for example, the image of a real person who left to live in another city. His image also appeared when influencing the senses, but only in the past.
And more examples. The mermaid that no one has ever seen. Or any goal is an image of the desired future, which has not yet come and, perhaps, will never come.
All these images have arisen without direct impact on the senses, thanks to the imagination.
Imagination is a mental process of forming an image an object, situation or other aspect of reality, in the absence of direct sensorimotor contact, based on the available impressions and ideas.
Here we first used the term "view", which has the following meaning:
Representation - image a previously perceived object, phenomenon, situation or other aspect of reality (memory representation, recollection), as well as an image created by the imagination.
So, as a result of the work of the imagination, ideas are born, however, not every idea is a product of the imagination - some ideas are simply taken from memory.
Representations are single and general.
For example, the specific birch that we recall is a singular representation. Birch in general is a general idea. But all the same, whatever the idea of \u200b\u200ba birch, we literally physically feel the rough and cool white bark, the noise of leaves, etc.
Those. representations of any community still have a sensually visual form, they are still at the figurative level, as well as sensations and perceptions. The order of complication of these objects is as follows:
sensation → perception → single representation → general representation.
General concepts border on concepts that relate to the verbal-logical level, because no longer possess a sensually visual form. For example, birch, as a concept, refers to the kingdom of plants, it is a genus of trees and shrubs of the birch family, found in the temperate and cold zones of the Northern Hemisphere and in the mountains of the subtropics.
In the light of the activity approach, which dominates in Russian psychology, the most important value of imagination as a mental process lies in the fact that it allows the subject to present the result of the activity before starting its implementation... Modeling the desired result in the imagination necessarily precedes its objective embodiment through specific actions and operations.
For a long time it was believed that the imagination operates only with figurative representations and does not extend to the content expressed by abstract concepts. IN last years a different approach emerged - imagination is increasingly seen as a combination of not only figurative, but also abstract elements.
It should be emphasized the huge role that imagination plays in the rational knowledge of the world. This cognitive process is important not only for art but also for scientific activities... Confirmation can be thought experiment the methodological substantiation of which was already given by Galileo Galilei 400 years ago. Thanks to productive work imagination Galileo was able to simulate a situation that is impossible from the point of view of Aristotelian physics: if all the reasons that hinder the free movement of a body in space are eliminated, the body will maintain movement for an infinitely long time. This situation, the possibility of which is revealed only in the plane of the imaginary, has become a classic illustration of the doctrine of inertial motion.
So, scientific thinking forms knowledge about the world, relying on an imaginary result thought experiment, and the productive power of the imagination manifests itself not in the multiplication of illusions, but in ensuring the rational comprehension of reality. It is no coincidence that the outstanding physicist Ernest Rutherford saw the prerequisites for the progress of scientific knowledge in the combination of fantasy and experiment.
Along with perception, memory and thinking and speech, imagination plays an important role in human activity.
Imagination is a mental process of mentally creating something new in the form of an image, representation, idea, action. At the same time, it is a phenomenon of the psyche. Also, imagination is a representation of an absent object. The process of imagination is peculiar only to man and is a necessary condition for him labor activity.
Before doing anything, a person imagines what needs to be done and how he will do it. Thus, he already creates an image of a material thing in advance, which will be made in subsequent practical activities. This human ability to imagine in advance the final result of his labor, as well as the process of creating a material thing, sharply distinguishes human activity from the “activity” of animals, sometimes very skillful.
Types of imagination:
- voluntary (active) - initiated by an effort of will, if necessary, in the course of solving problems;
- involuntary (passive) - is initiated involuntarily and manifests itself in dreams, dreams, fantasies, dreams;
- productive - "producing" something (the novel "The Master and Margarita", fantasy);
- reproductive - "reproducing", recreating reality, - what was known (in art - naturalism, realism);
- anticipatory - anticipating future events, consequences of actions;
- creative - creating new images and ideas that have value for people and are embodied in original products of activity.
Reality is passed through the productive imagination of the creators, they construct it in a new way, using light, color, filling their works with the vibration of air (impressionism), resorting to a point image of objects (pointillism in painting and music), decomposing the objective world into geometric figures (cubism) etc.
More often creative process in art it is associated with active imagination: before capturing any image on paper, canvas or sheet music, the artist creates it in his imagination, making conscious volitional efforts. Quite often the active imagination captures the creator so much that he loses connection with his time, his “I”, getting used to the image he creates. There is a lot of evidence for this in the literature.
Less often, passive imagination becomes the impulse of the creative process, since spontaneous images, independent of the artist's will, are most often the product of the subconscious work of his brain, hidden from himself. And, nevertheless, observations of the creative process, described in the literature, provide an opportunity to give examples of the role of passive imagination in artistic creation. So, Franz Kafka devoted an exceptional role in his work to dreams, capturing them in his fantastically dark works.
In addition, the creative process, starting, as a rule, with a volitional effort, that is, with an act of imagination, gradually captures the author so much that imagination becomes spontaneous, and it is no longer he who creates images, but the images own and control the artist, and he obeys their logic.
The work of the human imagination is not limited to literature and art. It manifests itself no less in scientific, technical, and other types of creativity. In all these cases, fantasy as a kind of imagination plays a positive role.
But there are other types of imagination - dreams, hallucinations, dreams, dreams, fantasies. Dreams can be classified as passive and involuntary forms of imagination. Their true role in human life has not yet been established, although it is known that many vital needs are expressed and satisfied in human dreams, which, for a number of reasons, cannot be realized in real life.
Hallucinations are fantastic visions that have almost no connection with the reality surrounding a person. Usually hallucinations are the result of certain disorders of the psyche or the work of the body and accompany many painful conditions.
Dreams, in contrast to hallucinations, are a completely normal mental state, which is a fantasy associated with the desired, most often with a somewhat idealized future.
A dream differs from a dream in that it is more realistic and is more connected with reality, that is, in principle, it is feasible. Dream - thinking about a pleasant, desired future, its image.
Dreams and dreams of a person take up a fairly large part of the time, especially in adolescence. For most people, dreams are pleasant thoughts about the future.
Fantasies are pictures to which nothing or little corresponds in reality. Some people also have disturbing visions that give rise to feelings of anxiety, guilt, aggressiveness.
Images of imagination, in contrast to images of perception, often do not correspond to reality.
Views are among secondaryimages that, in contrast to the primary ones (sensation and perception), arise in consciousness in the absence of direct stimuli, which brings them closer to images of memory, imagination and visual-figurative thinking.
Usually under submissionunderstand the mental process of reflection of objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality in the form of generalized visual images, and by imagination- mental process, consisting in the creation of new images by processing the material of perceptions and ideas obtained in previous experience.
The product (end result) of the view is image-representation,or a secondary sensory-visual image of objects and phenomena, preserved and reproduced in consciousness without the direct influence of the objects themselves on the sense organs.
It should be distinguished from the image-presentation as a product performanceas a process of deliberate and arbitrary creation of an image and mental manipulation (operation) of it when solving various kinds of problems.
Representations are in a complex relationship with other mental processes.
With sensation and perception, representation is related by the figurative, visual form of their existence. But sensation and perception always precede representation, which cannot arise from scratch. Representation is precisely the result of generalization of a number of essential and sometimes insignificant features of an object.
Representations often act as benchmarks. This circumstance brings them closer to identification processes. Recognition presupposes the presence of at least two objects - real, perceived and standard. There is no such dichotomy in representations.
Representations are often called images of memory, since in both cases there is a reproduction of a person's past experience. Both refer to secondary images that arise without reliance on direct perception. But in the representation there are no processes of memorization and preservation. In the process of remembering, a person is always aware of the connection with the past, while in the representation, in addition to the past, the present and the future can be reflected.
Images of the imagination are very close to representations. Imagination, like representation, uses material previously received by perception and stored memory. K-D. Ushinsky believed that the essence of imagination consists in combining images-representations. Still, imagination is a more creative process that develops over time, in which you can often trace the storyline. In representation, the object is more static: it is either motionless, or a limited number of manipulative operations are performed with it. Representation acts as a mechanism for re-creating imagination. But besides it, there are also various forms of creative imagination, which are not reducible to representation.
The degree of control on the part of a person over the images of his imagination varies greatly. So discern, imagination arbitrary(active) and involuntary(passive). The degree of arbitrariness of images smoothly changes from one form of imagination to another. So, the least degree of arbitrariness of the imagination is in dreams and hallucinations, and the greatest is in creativity. According to the methods of creating images, they also distinguish re-creatingand creativeimagination.
Images-representations serve as the basis for visual-figurative thinking. In the processes of thinking, the emphasis is on finding and discovering something new, and in the processes of representation, such a task is not set.
"The interpenetration of the visual and the generalized" in representations (BG Ananiev) is their distinctive feature and allows us to speak of representation as an independent mental process.
Depending on the characteristics of the subject of presentation, there are two main types of representations: visual,behind which there is a specific image, and abstract logical,behind which there are abstract concepts (A. Richardson). Each of these "types can have varying degrees of brightness, clarity and controllability.
The most common is the classification of visual representations by modal characteristics (B. G. Ananiev). It includes visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatoryand organicrepresentation. The latter are the essence of the idea of \u200b\u200bthe functional states of the body, individual organs and parts of the body. Here, the type of analyzer is taken as the basis for classification.
In accordance with the two main forms of the existence of matter, there are two types of concepts such as the concept of spaceand perceptions of time.Usually both those and others are polymodal, but it is possible to distinguish the reflection of spatial and temporal characteristics separately at the level of visual and kinesthetic analyzers.
Based on the temporal attribution of representations, a classification of images into reproductiveand anti citing(anticipating) (J. Piaget). In turn, each of them can be: a) static(idea of \u200b\u200ba stationary object); b) kinetic(idea of \u200b\u200bdifferent types of traffic); in) transformative(reflection known to man transformations of objects - from the reflection of the final result to the reflection of all stages of the transformation of the object from the initial state to the final).
IV.1.1.Characteristics of the presentation process. The process of representation is usually understood in two senses: as the creation of images-representations and how to operate them. In both cases, the representations acquire a dynamic character.
You can talk about changing views in timeand in space.Over the course of time, the presentation can become saturated with details, generalize, or, conversely, become more schematic; it can become brighter and more distinct, or, conversely, vague, undifferentiated. In space with images-representations, the following basic operations can be performed: mental rotation, large-scale transformations, various kinds of movement of objects, combining the constituent parts of the represented object, changes in spatial orientation, increment, grouping, splitting, etc.
A special group is made up of operations for recoding information associated with changing the dimension of an object. For example, when reading a geographic map, get an idea of \u200b\u200bthe relief of the area, and in a drawing lesson, present and depict a volumetric object in the form of projections on a plane.
Understanding representation as a process of operating with images-representations presupposes the presence of separate mental operations in this process. All mental operations can be divided into three groups (I. S. Yakimanskaya): 1) change in the process of representing the position of the object (objects) or its parts (mental rotation, grouping, change in spatial orientation, mental movement of objects, etc.); 2) changes in the process of representing the structure of an object (large-scale transformations, changes in the representation of the dimensions of objects, grouping of objects, etc.); 3) simultaneous changes in position and structure (increment, splitting, combining, etc.).
The operation and synthesis of images in the processes of imagination is carried out thanks to operations agglutination- connection of qualities, properties, parts of objects that are not connected in reality; hyperbolization- exaggeration or understatement of objects, their parts and qualities; sharpening- underlining any signs; schematization- smoothing out differences and identifying similarities; typification- highlighting the essential in homogeneous phenomena and embodying it in any specific image.