The relevance of the topic of the article. The development of tools for diagnosing the development of thinking in childhood is of interest for modern scientific research and educational practice. If the diagnosis of the formation of formal-logical operations in thinking has well-established traditions, then the creation of means for determining how a child thinks dialectically - in a contradictory situation, is at the beginning of its path in the field of developmental psychology. Since dialectical thinking is associated with the development of the child’s creativity, with flexibility, the creation of diagnostic methods to identify the formation of dialectical thinking is an urgent educational task.
The aim of the study. The design and psychometric evaluation of the methodology for determining the formation of the child’s dialectical mental action of changing the alternative are provided.
Description of the research progress. The methodology for diagnosing the dialectical mental action of changing an alternative consists of 15 series of 6 pictures each depicting images of flora, fauna and familiar objects of everyday life known to children. Children are invited to form two classes from six pictures. When choosing a classification basis, the action of changing the alternative is performed. The study involved 100 children aged 6 years 10 months to 8 years 2 months.
Research results. In the process of psychometric evaluation of the methodology for diagnosing the dialectical mental action of changing alternatives, procedures for calculating validity, reliability and discriminativeness were carried out.
Conclusion. High indicators of constructive and criterial validity, retest reliability of the method, its discriminativeness allow using it as a diagnostic tool in determining the child’s ability to use the dialectical mental action of changing the alternative.