The dissertation presents the integral concept of studying the phenomenon of listening and its psycholinguistic development in preschool-age children.
From the standpoint of active psycholinguistics and based on the basic postulates of psycholinguistic theory, the audio activity of the preschool children is considered as a psycholinguistic phenomenon, which has a hierarchical structure and phase construction, contains motivational, goal-forming and intro programming components.
According to the results of empirical stage of the study, the state of the development of auditory operations in preschool children in the zone of their actual audio-active development, in particular, the specific age characteristics and individual differences in the development of listening in preschool children have been identified. The unevenness in the development of audio operations and the individual levels of audio activity formation in preschoolers are stated: 1) high – the level of possession by audio operations, which is important for the implementation of purposeful audio activity; 2) sufficient – proper, normal, optimal for the implementation of audio activity; it is promising for the further development of listening and can be improved to the highest level; 3) average – inappropriate, insufficient for the implementation of audio activity, but possible under the certain didactic conditions for the implementation of audio acts; 4) low – unsatisfactory, problematic for implementation of audio activity level; this is a temporary level, which, under the certain didactic conditions, acts as a stage of the initial audio active development. It is noted that to each group of children, distinguished by the levels of audio operations development in them, correspond special psychological, psycholinguistic and personal characteristics.
Based on the revealed levels of audio operations development, a model of the purposeful formation of audio activity and its mechanisms in preschool children has been worked out; the preconditions and conditions are described, the psycholinguistic and pedagogical principles of the ontogenesis of audio activity in preschool children are characterized; the essence of the categories “psychotechnology” and “psychotechniques” of the development of audio activity in preschool children is revealed; the author’s diagnostic and developmental program “Audition in the native (in Ukrainian) language: diagnostic-developmental program” was presented.
It has been proved that in preschool children’s development of listening the important role plays an internal speech of а child, which is rapidly developing at this age and begins to fulfill the function of transformation of the perceived objective language values into internal semantic structures.
The theoretically proved and empirically confirmed necessity of the development of audio activity and its mechanisms in children of a preschool age in the area of their closest audio-activity development and the inseparably linked with it cognitive processes, psychostates and properties of children by means of the developed psychotechnologies of three varieties: 1) psychotechnologies of the primary audio (verbal perceptive-cognitive) operations development; 2) psychotechnologies for the development of audio (verbal perceptive-cognitive) actions; 3) psychotechnologies of the development of audio activity as a dynamic set of the perceived audio actions.
The positive dynamics of the influence of psychotechnologies on the formation of primary verbal perceptive-cognitive operations in preschool-age children has been experimentally confirmed. They provide: a) comprehension of the objective linguistic meanings in perception of speech structures in forms of psychocorrection, developmental training of speech; b) mastering and possessing by the operations of involuntary, unintentional understanding of the objective language values; c) influence on the mechanisms that “trigger” the operationalization of the objective language values (mechanisms of unconscious speech automation and unconscious setting).
On the basis of an accomplished psychological study, the author proposed the interpretation of the phenomenon “development of audio activity in preschool children”, which is defined as an evolutionary verbal speech-thinking process of the progressive acquisition by a child of qualitative changes in auditions associated with the emergence in children’s listening of the characteristics of purposefulness, the arbitrariness of the verbal perception, the stability of the motives of sense formation, the curtailment of the objective language meanings into semantic structures (situational values) in the internal speech, intents and awareness of the course of this sensory and semantic and notional process.
Key words: listening comprehension, the formation of audio operations and actions, the genesis of audio activity, internal speech, objective language values, sense, children of preschool age.
