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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.

The relevance of the topic of the article. For the wide educational practice of kindergartens, the question of the psychological mechanisms of creative thinking is fundamental, since their formation begins precisely at the age of three to five years. If during this period of a person’s life the educational process is structured in such a way that the child’s creative thinking is not supported or even suppressed, then it will be very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to compensate for gaps in cognitive development at later life stages. It should be emphasized that, as a rule, teachers do not support creative thinking or even act to the detriment of it precisely because of a lack of understanding of the key principles of its development, which, in particular, are related to ensuring a balance of activities that actualize formal-logical, dialectical and symbolic structures of thinking.

The aim of the study. The work is aimed at identifying the features of the structure of cognitive abilities that make up the complex mechanism of creative thinking, which is one of the basic problems of psychology of cognitive development today. The question is posed of how dialectical thinking, formal logic and the ability to symbolize are related in preschool age. The assumption is verified that the use of Piaget’s tools, focused on fixing reversibility relations and the formation of the phenomenon of preservation, will reveal new aspects of the relationship between formal-logical and dialectical thought structures.

Description of the research progress. 272 preschoolers from Moscow and other regions of the Russian Federation were individually diagnosed. For data processing, methods of correlation analysis and verification of the independence of parameters according to the Pearson’s chi-squared criterion were applied.

Research results. The results of the study showed that the connection between the three lines of cognitive development of preschoolers is traced more consistently in relation to formal and dialectical thinking. With regard to symbolization, the connections are less consistent. The article concludes that normative, transformative and symbolic abilities are relatively independent lines in the cognitive development of preschoolers.

Conclusion. The data obtained indicate the complexity and heterogeneity of the mechanism of creative thinking and the heterogeneous structure of relationships between formal-logical and dialectical structures, as well as the ability to symbolize. Therefore, the program for the development of creative thinking for preschoolers should have a balanced character: by influencing one type of structures, we cannot expect that the rest will also develop as a result of this influence. To actualize the complex mechanism of a child’s creative thinking in the pedagogical terms, it is necessary to design problem situations together with the children, the resolution of which requires both the use of formal and dialectical logic and the ability to invent symbols, images, metaphors.

Relevance (context) of the subject of the article. The problem of creative abilities is becoming increasingly important in two contexts at once – both in the context of human self-realization, and in the context of the development of practices and production. A special place is occupied by the development of creative abilities in preschool age: even in the works of Lev Vygotsky, it was said about the importance of considering the germs of creativity in the game and fantasy of children. Today, within the framework of the cultural-historical approach, there are a number of scientific schools that study the possibilities of diagnosing and developing children’s creativity.

The aim of the study is to analyze the approaches to the study of children’s creativity in cultural-historical psychology in order to understand what answers to the questions posed by Lev Vygotsky, were discovered over the past decades, and what remained unanswered. It is also important to see how the questions themselves were transformed, since the raising of a new question is a sign of the development of science. The correlation of existing approaches is important for the development of new research programs in the logic of cultural-historical psychology.

Description of the research. The article analyzes various approaches to the research and development of creative abilities: V.V. Davydov and V.T. Kudryavtsev, D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, N.E. Veraksa and O.M. Dyachenko, V.N. Druzhinin, L.F. Obukhova. The general and specific characteristics of the interpretation of children’s creativity in different approaches of the cultural and historical tradition are highlighted. The conducted research correlates with the questions about the creative nature of the human psyche and about children’s creativity, posed by L.S.Vygotsky.

Research results. The article concludes that despite all the differences in the approaches that have appeared in the logic of the cultural-historical tradition, they are united by the idea of the resourcefulness of preschool childhood and the importance of educational efforts aimed at maintaining the “sprouts of creativity”. In Russian studies, the question is raised about the means of creative abilities that allow us transforming the present situation (dialectical structures and symbols), as well as about the affective-volitional component of the creative process – the ability to detect a task. All this distinguishes the concepts that were born within the framework of the cultural-historical approach from the theory of creativity by J. Guilford and E. Torrance. At the same time, it is indicated that children’s activities (playing, storytelling, experimentation, etc.) are still rarely considered in research as a context for the manifestation of creative abilities.

Conclusion. The article concludes that it is important to conduct new research, both ascertaining and longitudinal, which will allow us to take the next steps in understanding how the means of developing creative abilities are mastered in children’s activities and how this affects the formation of creative abilities in subsequent ages.

The theory and research described in this article is based on the Vygotskian approach to human development. As this theory suggests, the promotion of semiotic activity in children is essential for their cultural development. It is argued in this paper that the promotion of semiotic activity in young children within the context of their play activity is an important aspect of the improvement of early childhood education. In a small scale exploratory study we observed pupils of 4-6 year old playing together with a train set. During this play the children were encouraged to make a diagram of their railway track. By analysing their play activity and their schematisations, we tried to find out whether (and how) the promotion of semiotic activity would be possible without affecting the play character of the children’s activity.

Vygotsky theory of higher mental functions formed the basis of understanding of the abilities and means of development. Abilities develop in childhood, providing “entry” in the culture and successful acquisition of different activities throughout life. Development of Vygotsky’s ideas formed understanding of the mechanisms leading to the formation of abilities in preschool childhood through the mastery and use of child preschool imagery tools. The following mental abilities and tools that promote development were identified: sensory (means – sensory etalons), intellectual (means – graphic-shaped models), creative (means – images) and symbolic (means – symbols). The use of imagery means for development of these types of abilities helps the child to deal with complex cognitive and creative tasks with a little help from an adult, i.e. extends the zone of proximal development. Adult acts as both a carrier of culture and as a partner of the child in various activities (educational, play, graphic etc.). Such approach to education and training not only provides intellectual and creative, but also personal and social development of preschool child.