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24PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES
ROLE OF PSYCHOMOTORICS IN CORRECTION OF THE PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY AND PRESCHOOL AGE CHILDREN
Biesieda V.
Candidate of pedagogical sciences Department of Orthopedagogy, Rehabilitation, and Orthopsychology National Pedagogic Dragomanov Uneversity 8/14 Turgenivska str., Kyiv, Ukraine, 00154 ORCID: 0000-0003-4262-6629
Abstract
The article briefly examines the history of the formation and transformation of psychomotor, as a multidisci-plinarity field of science.
The aim of the study is to determine the methodological status of psychomotor skills in the correction of the physical development of children with developmental disabilities.
There were used following research methods: method of analysis and method of synthesis.
The results of the study determined the main directions of motivation in educational and pedagogical activities and made it possible to single out the components of the motivational field, where theatricalization of the motor-game activity is the most effective in correcting psychomotor disorders in children.
At the end of the article, the following conclusions were done:
1. Psychomotorics as a part of psychological science has undergone significant transformations over the past 100 years, starting with the basic studies about the reflex and ending with studies of the psychomotor of a human based on the cultural paradigm.
2. Since psychomotor is originally a multidisciplinarity field of science, there is still no unified conceptual approach to understanding it in its various fields (psychology, pedagogy, medicine, rehabilitation and others), which complicates the interaction of specialists of different fields.
3. With regard to the study of the possibilities of psychomotor skills in the physical development correction of children, a methodological approach looks productive, in which the motor functional system is recognized as the main platform of psychomotor manifestations, supplemented by an adaptive and managerial superstructure in the form of a psychological component. It should be about the motor-psychic functional system (MPFS), as a constant (strategic) and temporary (tactical) integration of the motor and mental, dominantly forming at a particular moment in time to achieve the most rational (successful) solution of the life task.
Keywords: psychomotor skills, children of early and preschool age, psychomotor disorders, physical development, correction.
1. Introduction
In modern conditions, the number of children with developmental disabilities is growing steadily. Various biological, psychological and social factors contribute to the progression of the number of children with psy-chomotor disorders.
Psychomotor as a special type of human activity is a multidisciplinarity subject area of scientific knowledge and psychological and pedagogical practice, known as the psychology of voluntary movements, motor activity and motor sphere.
The academic works [6, 7] are devoted to this problem.
It should be noted that the beginning of the study of the above problem was devoted to the work of physiologists, where they indicate a significant role in the development of the child's psychomotor brain activity and associated with it the higher nervous activity [3, 5].
On the other hand, psychologists have identified the characteristics of a person's temperament and identified the outstanding characteristics of each of them, as well as the behavioral reactions inherent in a particular type of temperament. [1, 2].
Despite significant scientific research in various
fields (medicine, psychology, pedagogy), there is still no clear concept of psychomotor, its deviations in children and ways of correction with the help of physical education, which determined the purpose of our study.
The aim of the study is to determine the methodological status of psychomotor skills in the correction of the physical development of children with developmental disabilities.
2. Research methods
The method of analysis made it possible to identify the features of the development of children psycho-motor skills. The method of synthesis made it possible to define the concept of "psychomotor" in the form of a motor-psychic functional system (MPFS), as a permanent (strategic) and temporary (tactical) integration of the motor and mental.
3. Results and discussions
In the basic studies of I. M. Sechenov, devoted to the reflexes of the brain, it was shown that any reflex and mental act ends with a motor or ideomotor act, and muscular movement is the primary element of human activity. According to the author's definition, "the entire multiformity of cerebral activity ultimately comes down to only one phenomenon - movement." For the
first time, the term "Psychomotor" was proposed and described by him in 1862.
The scientist understood man as a bodily-spiritual being, which should be studied comprehensively: from the mental and physiological sides. He argued that the reflex should not be considered only as a mechanical reaction to the effects of the external environment, since in the article "Reflexes of the Brain" he tried to analyze only the outer side of reflexes, one of the aspects of its implementation.
It should be noted that the starting point of the scientist's reasoning was the assumption, that the functioning of the brain can be represented as a reflex "machine". For him, the idea of the human brain as a machine (even the most bizarre in the world) is productive, since it gives an approximately correct idea of its structure and its activity.
Researcher was also interested in the relationship between the products of consciousness and phenomena of a motor sphere, specifically: the outwardly visible mechanics of movements associated with mental phenomena (facial expressions, body expressiveness); the expediency of memorized movements in relation to a human's motives (memorized combinations of movements of an artisan); movements expressing processes occurring in consciousness (speech); movements that appear for no reason (familiar movements), etc.
The provisions developed by the scientist about the reflex as a universal dynamic mechanism for regulating human behaviour and activity, about the motor analyzer as an integrator of the analyzer systems of the individual, about the epistemological and praxeological functions of the motor analyzer, objectifying all forms of mental reflection in muscle movements, stimulated the study of central psychological mechanisms implementation of movements, outlined the ways of penetration into the mechanisms of mental regulation of human motor activity.
Such traditions were continued by I. P. Pavlov, who further developed the idea of the integrity and openness of the organism to the external environment and dispelled the myth about man as the center of unrelated principles - bodily and spiritual. The scientist included the concept of "behaviour" in the lexicon of physiologists along with the term "higher nervous activity" and proposed the concept of the natural science study of the physiological and psychological aspects of the vital activity of the organism in their inseparable integrity. He interpreted behaviour as an intrinsically valuable concept, not reducible either to physiological processes or to processes of consciousness, behind which stands "... a living organism, performing a number of activities ..." [5].
According to the new approach, mental, as well as physiological, was attributed to objective phenomena, and behaviour to phenomena that are not reducible to them, which occurs according to the laws of reflex activity, with an integral mental component which is external to what is happening in the nervous system. The mental component was assigned the role of a regulator of the organism's behaviour in a constantly changing environment. This approach predetermined the understanding that reflex activity is determined by the body
and is not limited only to the response to stimuli from the external environment, as previously assumed, but has a circular nature. The general scheme of the reflex acquired the following form: "... the receptor apparatus, the central station (centers), the afferent nerve with its working tissue ..." [5].
In this scheme, the psyche was assigned a signal function that was not initially set in the human nervous system but formed under certain conditions in the interests of the integrity and improvement of the living system, up to social (in the case of a human).
A significant breakthrough in understanding the psychological essence of a human was identification of two types of human behaviour:
1. The first type of behaviour is due to the signal self-regulation of the developing organism in accordance with the general rules of higher nervous activity in animals and humans.
2. Also, the scientist singled out special human mechanisms, fundamentally distinguishing his mental life and behaviour from an animal, and called them the second signal system. This special system was generated by the development of human culture and includes peculiar regulators of behaviour in the form of signs, that are not reducible only to the simplest conditioned reflexes.
In his studies, the reflex appeared to be the central concept in explaining different types of human behaviour, including his motor activity. The reaction of the organism was now recognized as selective in relation to environmental influences. The scheme of the reflex acquired a circular character, and the complex of muscle reactions itself was considered by the scientist as an active factor in the relationship of the whole organism and the environment. At the same time, the only explanation of the mechanism of reflex activity according to Pavlov was "paving the path in the central nervous system with more and more repetition of the stimulus", which postponed the participation of mental functions in human behavioural acts.
Meanwhile, V. M. Bekhterev tried to understand the neuropsychic sphere of human activity through the prism of reflexology. Creating a natural science paradigm in psychology, he relied on the use of exclusively objective methods of analysis. Manifestations of mental activity were considered by him in the context of the data of physiology and neurology of higher nervous activity as processes accompanying acts of behaviour. It is fundamentally important in understanding of his studies to limit the research of the material side of both conscious and unconscious mental processes. The reflex was recognized by the scientist as the main unit of analysis of the neuropsychic activity of a human, understood as a universal dynamic mechanism underlying the reactions of any animal organism. Human activity (in a broader sense - behaviour) appeared in this concept in the form of reflexes sum that differ in complexity and character, and the characteristics of the organization. He understood movements in the structure of a human's neuropsychic activity as an external manifestation of the vital activity of his organism, an expression of his mental life in its various manifestations. This applied equally to simple combination reflexes and
more complex manifestations, which he called personal movements, or, in cases of more complex motor reactions, "personal actions and deeds". The neuropsychic processes act as a unit of the neuropsychic sphere. The scientist believed that all mental processes are the essence of not only subjective experiences but at the same time material processes; that there is not a single mental process that would be only subjective or spiritual and would not be accompanied by certain material manifestations. He urged to talk about the same process, which is expressed simultaneously by material or objective changes in the brain, as well as subjective manifestations and argued that both are the expression of the same single neuropsychic process. Therefore, in order to avoid any misunderstandings and to eliminate the long-established opposition of the spiritual to the material, the scientist suggested talking about the neuropsychic processes [1].
Thus, neuropsychic activity, manifested in involuntary and voluntary movements, actions and deeds of a human, is essentially derivatives of the primary irritability of the cellular protoplasm. All motor manifestations, starting from elementary motor processes of the simplest cellular organisms in the form of contractility of their protoplasm and ending with various manifestations of human movements, are nothing more than the result of the most complex processes of his neuropsychic activity. The process of development of neuropsy-chic activity consists of the education of combination reflexes, including, on the one hand, the processes of differentiation in the sense of the development of combination reflexes under the influence of more and more frequently repeated external stimuli, on the other hand, in their selective combination (integration).
The most important point in the objective psychology should be considered the conceptual position, according to which the development of the neuropsychic sphere occurs not only due to the "anatomical traces" left by the nerve centers after external impressions but also due "traces" temporarily stalled due to internal or external inhibition of the path combination reflexes, which are revived as soon as this inhibition is overcome for one reason or another. According to the researcher, the nerve current always rushes more easily along the once already beaten path as the path of least resistance, which is an expression of the general law of energy manifestation, carried out in the neuropsychic sphere [1].
In order to study the ontogenesis of the neuropsy-chic sphere, it should be consistently noted all those manifestations of neuropsychic activity, and especially motor reactions based on personal experience, which is found in a human from the day his birth. [6] At the same time, it is extremely important to pay attention to whether the studied motor function is the result of a simple reflex or an expression of personal experience, to the movement dependence on external and internal stimuli. In other words, whether the movements are the result of a directly excited external reaction, or as movements once performed, familiar to him. The problem of the motor functions study lies in the fact that in "... complex neuropsychic processes, the external reaction does not stand in the closest and direct relationship
with the irritation that has affected the body, but is a distant consequence of it, and the nature, and sometimes the direction of the reaction, is largely determined revived traces from previous effects on the body of the same or another kind, and in this revival of the previous traces the personality itself plays an essential role, formed by a set of constantly revived traces from internal irritations of the organism ... "[1].
Thus, all the variety of motor manifestations of living organisms, starting from the simplest motor acts in unicellular organisms and ending with the most complex manifestations of behavioural movements in humans, were recognized as the result of combined systemic processes of his neuropsychic activity.
A. A. Ukhtomsky made his scientific and practical contribution to the study of psychomotor from the standpoint of humanistic approaches. The transition from a purely mechanistic style of scientific thinking to a broader humanistic knowledge of a human as a biosocial creature made it possible to study the problem of psychomotor not only as mechanisms of the primary structure but as mechanisms of exercise, training, as a developing functional organ.
To explain human behaviour, the scientist introduced the concept of dominant, as the main principle of the functioning of nerve centers in the form of any temporary combination of forces capable to achieve any certain goal, as a certain energy fund of the body, which is spent at every moment mainly along a certain vector, and thus by the same token, other possible jobs are removed from the queue. According to the scientist, "... The energy fund of the body is unstable, on the one hand, it is spent on processes that go on by themselves, on the other hand, in the very process of work it can be replenished in excess due to forced processes ..." [7]. From this it follows that well-coordinated full-fledged muscle activity is beneficial to the human body, since "... when a certain muscle group works at full strength, and other muscles are excluded from the sphere of tetanic irritation and only fixes the working joints, this will be an optimally productive energy setting, while more or less sluggish and the erratic work of the muscles with low efforts will be energetically less beneficial, the weaker the efforts. Setting with maximum effort to one side with the exclusion of other muscles from the sphere of tetanic irritation is the dominant setting "[7]. In the course of this process, temporary connections with the environment are established, the body is enriched with new capabilities that expand the range of freedom of human motor behaviour. Formed organs function as a single organ capable of restructuring, their individual components can be replaced by others while maintaining the integrity of the functional system [7].
Scientist's perception of a human as a biosocial being made it possible to perceive the problem of human psychomotor skills not as "... mechanisms of the primary structure ..., but mechanisms of exercise", i.e. dynamically, in development. And the application of the dominant principle explained the active nature of human psychomotor as energetically beneficial to the human body.
These fundamental provisions in the studies of the above scientists created the prerequisites for the study
of psychomotor as a culturally determined mental function of a human. Having not received a clear answer from physiology about the control of human motor behaviour, domestic and foreign psychology in the twentieth century made such an attempt. But at the same time, its representatives did not manage to overcome traditional empiricism, methodological vagueness and multi-vector pluralism of scientific approaches, which gave rise to a set of contradictory ideas about the psychological essence of human motor activity. All this together did not allow to develop a unified conceptual vision of the psychomotor problem in psychology.
Today, the cultural concept of psychomotor becomes more and more relevant, in which a human (child) is considered not only as a neuropsychic (psy-chophysiological) being but as a representative of Homo sapiens, existing and developing in a certain cultural environment created by humanity in a broad and specific sense of this concept. Symbolical in this regard is the idea that the most important thing in the physical development of preschoolers is figurative movements, which reflect the imagination, and this is the key position of the child's psychomotor manifestations.
Yu. I. Rodin asserts that "human psychomotor skills exist not only and not so much in the space created by nature, but to a greater extent in the space of culture, which transforms the human body from a representative of the Homo sapiens into a cultural human. In other words, psychomotor activity is not inside the "body of an individual", but inside the human body. The latter is a more complex and broad formation, which includes not only an organism but also artificial, culturally mediated organs, which human has created and continues to create in the course of phylogenesis and ontogenesis. This refers to the construction of motor behaviour according to culturally given patterns or the construction on their basis of fundamentally new ways of solving constantly arising motor tasks "[6]. In his opinion, from birth, the organic body of a child has the potential to become cultured, according to the inclusion of the baby in the system of human relations. Culture permeates the child with positive energy, which allows him to realize and accept himself as a kind of unity, individuality, personality [6]. In his opinion, the recognition of the cultural determination of human psy-chomotor provides a chance to understand the psychological essence of human motor behaviour in living functioning, in the aggregate of connections with other living organismic formations and artificially culturally mediated organs in objective relationships. This raises the problem of human psychomotor skills to the level of development of higher forms ofbehavior. In the opinion of the researcher, only in this context should we consider the procedural plan of building movements, including the formation of a program of motor behaviour, its restructuring, decision-making on its implementation, a transformation of the "intention to act" into the corresponding "command signals" for initiating and controlling movements.
Further, the scientist puts forward an interesting concept that the place and significance of psychomotor in the integral psychological system of a human are determined by the actualization of this or that activity
(broader than behaviour) and the significance of psy-chomotor function in it. The border between the dominant position of psychomotor and its "presence" as an operational component of the activity (not only behaviour) implementation is indefinite, changing at different points in time. The latter means that adaptive motor behaviour of a human is achieved due to the integration activity of various mental systems, temporarily combined into a single functional system.
"From the above it follows that psychomotor skills are a complex psychological and developing system in the form of a temporary unification of various mental systems into a single functional organ capable of selectively reflecting objective information about human motor behaviour, controlling movements and effectively controlling them in constantly changing conditions" [6].
Study limitations. In the aspect of correcting the physical development of children with psychomotor disorders, we are somewhat confused by the author's dominant emphasis on the psychological essence of psychomotor manifestations. Apparently, it would be more objective to recognize the motor functional system (MFS) as the main platform of psychomotor manifestations, supplemented by an adaptive-managerial superstructure in the form of a psychological component. Perhaps, we need to talk about the motor-mental functional system (MMFS), as a constant (strategic) and temporary (tactical) integration of the motor and mental, dominantly forming at a particular moment in time to achieve the most rational and adequate (successful) solution of the life task.
Prospects for further research. Prospects for further research may lie in the stream of the search for optimal ways to combine the correction of the motor component and the managerial mental component on the basis of the general cultural paradigm of the child's psychomotor manifestations.
6. Conclusions
1. Psychomotorics as a part of psychological science has undergone significant transformations over the past 100 years, starting with the basic studies of I. M. Sechenov about the reflex as a universal dynamic mechanism for regulating human behaviour and activity and ending with studies of the psychomotor of a human (child) based on the cultural paradigm, considering human behaviour in the context of the degree of his social domestication.
2. Since psychomotor is originally a multidiscipli-narity field of science, there is still no unified conceptual approach to understanding it in its various fields (psychology, pedagogy, medicine, rehabilitation and others), which complicates the interaction of specialists of different fields in achieving certain goals.
3. With regard to the study of the possibilities of psychomotor skills in the physical development correction of children of early and preschool age, a methodological approach looks productive, in which the motor functional system is recognized as the main platform of psychomotor manifestations, supplemented by an adaptive and managerial superstructure in the form of a psychological component. It should be about the motor-
psychic functional system (MPFS), as a constant (strategic) and temporary (tactical) integration of the motor and mental, dominantly forming at a particular moment in time to achieve the most rational (successful) solution of the life task.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
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