All articles

The article provides an overview of international research relating to the study of interaction between child and rule in a normative situation. The reason why the analysis of the articles brings up the issue of child and rule interaction stems from L.Vygotsky’s theory of cultural determination and provisions of N.Veraksa’s theory of culture as a system of normative situations. In contrast to Russian authors who reflect the psychology of a child’s interaction with culture, their foreign counterparts focus on more specific points, consequently, research in developmental psychology has more to do with phenomenology than theory or conception. Among the sources of the articles cited are works recently written by scholars in the field of child psychology and dedicated to different aspects of a child’s learning the rules of the cultural context of its development. Research into the issue of interaction between the child and the rule is empirical in nature and involves addressing specific situations which contain certain cultural norms. The article analyzes the studies related to the safety of children, the role of imitation in learning the rules, mass media influence on the nature of rules to be learned, formation of pro-environmental behavior through a system of specific rules and everyday behaviors which the researchers call contextually normal, the interrelation between a child’s knowledge of rules and relevant discursive strategies in children’s struggle for power.

The article describes conducted study on the identification of how the cultural congruence of children is related to cognitive development, especially to the development of dialectical thinking. Author investigates how the child’s behavior in the cultural (normative) situation allows him to solve problem situations involving dialectical mental actions as thinking tools. Study sample included 106 preschool children from the city of Kazan, as well as the parents of those children. Methods used were aimed at the diagnostics of dialectical thinking (“Dialectical stories”) and cultural congruence (“Method of the cultural congruence of preschooler determination”). The author reveals the conventional model of the relationship of dialectical thinking and cultural congruence. A high level of compliance with the normative situation tends to reflect low flexibility in solutions of problem situations, which imply active usage of dialectical mental actions. Among the factors included in the assessment of cultural congruence child of preschool age, the most inconsistent factor turned out to be the safety factor.

The key actors in the normative interaction situations are a child and an adult. It is an adult, who is broadcasting rules to the child, and who can evaluate the degree of congruence of the child as a subject of culture (of the normative situation). The paper presents an analysis of the psychology of the child’s correspondence with the rules of culture – cultural congruence. Education of the individual in a culture is the formation of the creative potential of the child, based on the capacity of critical analysis and reflection. The authors emphasize that the education of the individual requires means that differ from those that are needed for raising the subject. The article describes a technique for identifying the cultural congruence among 5-6 years old children. The method is based on the identified range of human interaction in the social situations between the child and the adult. It allows to determine compliance of the child with the standards on the basis of indicators of five scales which together form integral indicator of cultural congruence.