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Background. As AI becomes embedded in children’s lives, from entertainment to learning, the role of content is transforming—from passive consumption to active, system-embedded dialogue.

Methods. This article draws from content development experience at Mako Kids and research-led design at KidsAI. It integrates global studies, co-design fieldwork, and expert interviews to analyze how children interpret AI tools and how design influences developmental outcomes.

Results. Findings show that children anthropomorphize AI agents and that system behavior often teaches unintended lessons. Core principles of quality content—including age-appropriateness, holistic thinking, inclusion, safety, play-based learning, and cultural relevance—remain essential in AI-driven environments. Structured prompts, ethical voice design, and scaffolded interactions are key design features in KidsAI’s work, including the development of Olly, KidsAI’s assistant for kids.

Conclusions. Content must now function as ethical infrastructure in sociotechnical systems. Designers must avoid emotional simulation and focus on supporting autonomy, reflection, and cognitive safety. AI should guide—not mimic—human relationships, with clarity and respect.

Background. Today’s common typologies and categories of children’s toys are mainly decided by the manufacturers and retailers of children’s products. Such categorizations are not based on a theoretical understanding of child development and therefore cannot provide information about the opportunities that toys provide for the young.

Objective. This study proposed three criteria for categorizing toys based on the cultural-historical approach: their degree of realism; their degree of anthropomorphism; and their degree of detail. These criteria were chosen as a result of an analysis of theoretical works carried out in the framework of cultural-historical approach.

Design. The proposed criteria were tested through an experiment measuring children’s toy preferences. The participants were 129 children of ages 3-4 years. Experimental data confirmed that most children do prefer realistic and detailed toys rather than those with fewer of these properties. The contribution of socio-demographic factors and the children’s individual developmental indicators to their toy preference was also analyzed.

Results. The study revealed that among various socio-demographic factors, only the child’s gender and the number of siblings in the family acted as significant predictors for the toy preferences. None of child’s developmental characteristics (non-verbal intelligence, executive functions, and emotional understanding) were found to be significant predictors of preference for particular toys.

Conclusions. The assumption that toys can be assessed in terms of their realism and degree of detail found empirical support. The results of this study may be useful in designing further research and in the practical issue of toy selection for children age 3-4 years.

Background. Preschool age is a period of great importance for psychological development and preparation for school. One of the activities that must be formed in preschool age is visual activity, which is of great importance for the overall development of a preschooler. Involving children in visual activity is a step necessary for forming a solid neuropsychological foundation that will determine their success not only at school, but also in life in general.

Objective. The purpose of this study was to apply a program for gradual formation of drawing skills and determine its impact on development in preschool age.

Sample. This study involved 9 preschool children - third-grade students of a preschool institution. A qualitative assessment of visual activity was applied to all participants before and after inclusion in the experimental program.

Methods. To achieve this goal, an intervention program was implemented, which consists in gradually teaching drawing to children in their third year of preschool attendance (Solovieva, Quintanar, 2016). All children were given the same qualitative assessment tool for the development of drawing skills before and after the application of the program (Solovieva, Quintanar, 2016).

Results. The data obtained allow us to state an improvement in the results of the final assessment, which revealed qualitative and quantitative changes.

Conclusions. It was shown that the program for the gradual formation of drawing skills had a positive effect on the acquisition of visual activity.

Relevance. The article is devoted to the search for opportunities that are provided to a child in modern childhood. Modern childhood, on the one hand, provides children with extraordinary opportunities for development, such as the use of digital devices to implement various ideas, mastering various aspects of culture not only from books, but also through direct acquaintance with the original cultural samples in various museums in different countries. But on the other hand, the wide opportunities associated with travel and acquaintance with modern achievements of science and technology simultaneously generate situations of uncertainty in which children find themselves: for example, such as a pandemic. Society faces the task of realizing the changes that humanity is facing. Flights into space, robotization processes, the emergence of artificial intelligence, etc. poses a new problem of learning. Children and adults are increasingly in a situation of uncertainty.

The aim of the study. To show the possibilities of developmental therapy from the perspective of developmental psychology and psychotherapy on different groups of children.

Description of the research progress. The study was conducted on a group of children who survived the terrorist attack in preschool and primary school age (Beslan, 2004 – 40 children) and children who found themselves in a situation of emotional distress and stress during the pandemic (2020–2021 – 20 children). Group and individual classes were held in offline and online format.

Results. There is a very special task of restoring the normal course of mental development of those children who have experienced unusual situations associated with existential experiences. The possibilities of meeting with negative situations gives rise to fear of the future, which slows down children’s development and limits the horizon of the formation of the personality of a modern person. Studies show that methods aimed at the development of children in certain conditions can achieve a stable psychotherapeutic effect and emotional harmonization, and can be used to work, including with fears. It was shown that such tools as visual models and the author’s symbol can be used for development and psychotherapy, which is developmental therapy in conditions of unpredictable future and uncertainty.

Conclusion. Adaptation to the challenges of the time is becoming one of the important tasks of supporting the development of a modern child. One of the forms of such support is developmental psychotherapy, the theoretical foundations of which are set out in the proposed article.

Background. Digital technologies are playing an increasingly important role in various fields, including education. However, despite their widespread use, the specific characteristics of the digital environment and its impact on preschoolers remain insufficiently studied at the theoretical level. It is important to understand the place and role of gadgets in kindergarten settings, how they can enrich a child’s social development situation, and what the adult’s role should be.

Objective. To examine 6-7 year-old children’s perceptions of their ideal personal phone (appearance, functions), and to analyze the relationship between these perceptions and actual phone use in groups with fundamentally different pedagogical approaches to gadgets.

Sample. The study involved 47 children aged 6-7 (25 girls and 22 boys) fr om 9 preschool groups across 3 educational institutions. Educators in these groups had different approaches to using digital devices.

Methods. The research was conducted using the mosaic approach, where children participated as co-researchers. Primary methods included drawing with commentary and interviews. For quantitative analysis, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test was applied.

Results. Qualitative analysis of children’s responses and interpreted drawings revealed that smartphones are significant objects for preschoolers, children are aware of its possible and real applications. Children demonstrated awareness of real-world applications, primarily planning to use phones for entertainment/games and communication, less for information-seeking. In groups where teachers didn’t use phones, children focused more on appearance (cases, phone-as-pet designs with ears/tails), while in gadget-positive groups, they emphasized more diverse functions, including child-task-oriented imaginary features. Gender differences were minimal, though girls more frequently mentioned calling and service/purchasing apps, while boys emphasized gaming.

Conclusions. Gadgets are relevant to preschoolers, with children’s phone-use conceptions ranging from predominantly reproductive (e.g., pretend phone play) to rare productive uses (e.g., creating self/friend videos) and institutional integration. The adult’s role is crucial: in groups wh ere educators actively used gadgets as cultural tools, children’s drawings showed greater app diversity and productive applications for situational problem-solving (e.g., information searches).

Relevance. Observing the modern processes taking place in the educational society, it is impossible not to note the marked generation gap and, as a result, the depreciation of cultural ideals and values among young people and the younger generation. The article presents the experience of testing the pedagogical technology “Artifact”, based on the key ideas of the cultural and historical approach and designed to make cultural artifacts the semantic and value core of the educational process of a preschool educational organization.

Progress of the study. The study involved 147 preschoolers aged 4 to 7 years attending preschool educational organizations in Moscow and the Voronezh Region. The study was supposed to design a complex of psychological and pedagogical conditions for the development of a cultural sample by a child through the acquaintance of preschoolers with a cultural artifact, the restoration of cultural meanings and contexts, and to obtain products of children’s creativity (children’s artifacts) created on its basis.

The results of the study. In each age group participating in the study, the original cultural artifacts were identified and based on them, various children’s artifacts with partial or complete reproduction of mastered cultural samples were obtained using the Artifact technology.

Conclusions. A cultural artifact, as an entry point into culture under specially designed psychological and pedagogical conditions, is an object of cognition appropriate to preschool childhood and a source of a cultural sample offered to a child for development in the zone of proximal development. Being a part or the basis of a children’s creative product (children’s artifact), a cultural sample becomes a particle of the culture of the future and an important condition for the formation of a conscious and value-based attitude of the younger generation to cultural heritage. Thus, the Artifact technology has been successfully tested in the conditions of real pedagogical processes in kindergartens and can be recommended for solving problems related to the implementation of a value-oriented component of educational programs and the assignment of traditional Russian values by preschoolers.

Creative imagination is studied at the materialized, perceptual and verbal levels in school-age children. Fifty children from a private school in Puebla, Mexico participated. An evaluation protocol was applied in a collaborative and interactive way under the concept of the zone of proximal development that involves the participation of the evaluator and the use of various types of support: dialogic conversation, repetition of instruction and orientation questions. The results reveal that children access materialized and perceptual action tasks more easily than verbal ones. These results are discussed in terms of the possible implications of the development of creative imagination for school age.

Background. The global refugee crisis creates a significant number of problems related to the need to solve political, economic, social, psychological and other issues of organizing the life of forced migrants. The most acute among them are the psychological consequences of forced displacement, which have a negative impact on the subjective well-being, mental health, emotional state and other areas of mental life of the least protected category of refugees – children.

The aim of study. Generalization and systematization of Russian and foreign experience in studying the psychological problems of refugee children, including those left without parental care and adopted into a new family.

Methods. This study is based on a theoretical comparative psychological analysis of Russian and foreign research, the subject of which includes the study of problems in the psychology of refugees.

Results. In the course of the study, typical psychological problems that arise for refugees in situations of forced relocation were generalized and systematized - adaptation disorders, emotional disorders, the development of stressful conditions, irreversible personal changes, etc. A variety of forms and methods of psychological assistance to refugees, including educational and cultural integration, was shown, individual, group, cognitive-behavioral and other types of psychotherapeutic assistance. It is argued that while there is an understanding of the importance of family as a factor in the psychological well-being of refugee children, the amount of research into the problem of host families is clearly disproportionate to the growing number of refugees.

Conclusion. Summarizing the results obtained, the authors formulate the main idea that the host family should be considered as a subject of providing psychological assistance to refugee children in solving typical problems of emotional, personal, behavioral, communicative and other spheres of their life. The successful solution of this problem directly depends on the systematic work of the scientific community to assess the psychological problems of refugee children, the development of adaptive, developmental, correctional and other programs for psychological support of forced migrants.

Child neuropsychology studies brain functional causes of learning disabilities. Such causes might be conformed as types or neuropsychological profiles, each of which might be commonly established during neuropsychological clinical assessment.

The aim of the article is to show the possibilities of historical and cultural approach in neuropsychology for conformation and study of such qualitative profiles. The authors, basing on own experience during more them two decades of direction of neuropsychological assessment, present types of neuropsychological profiles, which are common in Russia and Mexico in cases of learning disabilities, according to diversity of different errors and mistakes found in each particular case.

It’s interesting to notice that there are both coincidence and difference within the process of identification of neuropsychological profiles by specialists. The article discusses the necessity of continuation of clinical analysis of syndromes as typical and atypical qualitative profiles in order to understand and provide optimal assessment and treatment in cases of learning disabilities.