Imaginative thinking: features and methods of development

Every person's brain contains countless images. Any words heard or read instantly extract certain visual images from the individual's consciousness, transforming them. Any person is capable of figurative thinking.

In psychology, much attention is paid to the cognitive mechanisms that form the basis of a person's figurative thinking. The ability to think in images is an indispensable component of knowledge. The content of a mental task is based on figurative material. In the repository of human memory, there is a huge number of sensory images that people use to reflect life processes. The inner world of a person is built on the basis of visual, auditory, tactile, and gustatory images. When solving any problems, the subject analyzes, compares, generalizes different images of phenomena and events.

Imaginative thinking is characterized by important features.

• Comprehension of the situation occurs as a whole, without splitting into separate details. Passion for specific elements does not allow a person to see the whole picture, that is, behind the waves he may not see the seas. When processing new information, this type of mental activity involves direct extraction from memory or recreation through the imagination of various images, and not judgments or inferences.
• Unusual correspondences are established between objects and their properties. A kind of mental picture of solving problems arises in the form of insight. No personality can control unconscious processes. Sometimes incomprehensible and even the most incredible images flash in the brain of an individual.In fact, they are beneficial in shaping and developing imaginative thinking.
• Imaginative thinking is characterized by associativity, dynamism, mobility... This is a speedy type of thought process. Sometimes a person does not have time to clothe the images that have arisen in words.

Reflection of reality in a figurative form is most typical for works of art and literature.

It is the image that is the basic unit of thinking in babies. According to researchers, 30% of schoolchildren up to grade 6 use thinking tools in a figurative form to memorize rules and solve problems. Reliance on the image contributes to the good assimilation of school material, activates the creative sides of the child, forms his imagination.

In the life of every person, the ability to think in images plays an important role. The use of figurative associations, fantasies opens up new opportunities for the development of imagination, attention, memory, and the creative abilities of a person. Imaginative thinking is used as an additional tool to expand the ability to solve any life task or cope with a problem that has arisen. It helps to reflect objective reality in a multifaceted and diverse way.

The degree of imagination depends on the level of consciousness, life experience, inner harmony. This type of mental activity helps a person express their ideas about any objects and phenomena, transform them in the event of changed circumstances. In this regard, the subject has the opportunity to complete the missing details of the picture, expand associative connections, mentally penetrate deep into the problem or task.

In many creative professions it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to do without figurative thinking. Designers, artists, fashion designers, architects, poets, writers, philosophers think in images. The productivity of the use of figurative components is widely manifested in intellectual creativity.

Diagnostics of children's imaginative thinking is carried out by folding cut pictures. In this way, the ability to collect the particles of the image into a single whole is tested. The reunification of individual details indicates the presence of mental chaos or purposefulness when creating a holistic image. An adult or a teenager can make the diagnosis on their own.

Imagine sequentially several images and rate their brightness on a 10-point scale, where 1 is a too weak image, and 10 is a very bright visual picture:

• a beautiful motorcycle is parked near your house;
• the same motorcycle starts to move;
• the same vehicle rushes at great speed through the streets of the city;
• a motorcycle overtakes a line of cars;
• it gradually recedes, turns into a small dot and almost disappears from view;
• now the same motorcycle is lying on the side of the road with its wheels turned upside down;
• it is returned to its normal position;
• this time he drives carefully, slowly;
• a motorcycle rides along a mountain serpentine;
• he rushes in the dark with his headlight on.

40 points are considered a good result.... This means that the brightness of your images is at the proper level. If the result is less than 20 points, it is necessary to urgently take measures to develop imaginative thinking activity.

It is necessary to start the development of thinking with the help of images from 4-5 years old. Various techniques are used. For example, the "storyteller's experiment" method is used for preschool children.

The first word that comes to mind is selected, which must be combined with another concept using prepositions. For example, the words "cat" and "box": "cat on the box", "cat under the box", "cat in the box". And then children's imagination turns on, and various images are created: a cat in a box lives with kittens; a cat in a box keeps its outfits and accessories; the cat hides under the box from the bright sun; the cat has laid out the dishes on the box and treats them to its stray friends.

For the formation of imaginative thinking, you need to give free rein to fantasy. For this purpose, it is necessary to mentally create visual pictures, build associative rows. Psychologists recommend organizing the search for associations more often for elementary school students. The game is called "What's It Like?" She perfectly develops imaginative thinking in younger students. Children are invited to carefully discern a spiral, rectangle, circle, any squiggle, abstract drawing and come up with their own associations.

During the learning process, the exercises gradually become more difficult. For the formation of imaginative thinking, it is necessary to include tasks that require operating with images of various levels of generalization, images of the objects themselves... Exhibitions of works of art, travel, descriptions of various landscapes contribute to effective thinking using vivid mental pictures.

Adults can train imaginative thinking by presenting vivid interconnected pictures that help construct images. You need to mentally visualize the upcoming action. If you are afraid to forget to make any payment, you need to present a vivid picture. Draw in your head how you enter Sberbank and approach the terminal. The brain itself will complete this action for you the moment you walk past Sberbank. He will remind you of unpaid bills.

Usually, in childhood, this type of thought process develops actively through fantasies and role-playing games. Kids are shaped with the help of making various crafts, appliqués, origami, macrame, plasticine sculpting, drawing with both hands, assembling puzzles, playing dominoes and bingo. A very good means of developing this type of thinking is reading fairy tales using facial expressions, gestures and emotions, watching cartoons, drawing cartoon characters with conjecturing the plot, as a result of which you get an unrecognizable, new hero. You need to constantly ask the child to fantasize at the sight of pebbles, clouds, snags.

Suitable for children role-playing games with transformation. After the roles have been assigned, a fictional situation is played out. Babies transform into patients and doctors, buyers and sellers, clients and hairdressers. They can become circus or theater performers, fashion designers, astronauts.

The task is formed taking into account the possibility of realizing children's fantasy to the maximum. For example, during a flight to Mars, an engine breakdown occurred, an urgent need to land on the nearest planet. Children should tell what they see through imaginary windows, describe in detail the unknown territory, calculate the remaining food supplies.

To complete the next task, you need to use any familiar object and supplement it with new functions... For example, an ordinary empty can of canned food can be turned into a container for germinating seeds, a box for storing buttons into a head attachment for a little snowman.

You can learn to think figuratively with the help of postcards that depict any object. The child is asked to imagine instead of this object some representative of the fauna.For example, a painted sun may be associated with a lion's head, where the sun's rays turn into a mane. Another toddler might imagine a spider or an octopus. Children are asked to verbally describe an animal or insect that has arisen in their imagination. Then you need to draw it.

In the future, the training of imaginative thinking is carried out with the help of the same postcards, but this time the children are given the task of imagining food products instead of the objects depicted. Then you can ask which representatives of the flora the print looks like. The sun in a child's imagination can turn into a cake, a sunflower or a chamomile.

Droodles are widely used to manipulate mental images. They resemble doodles that are good for developing the imagination. It is necessary to put a new meaning into every scribble that is a graphic puzzle. To correlate the picture and the image that has arisen in the head, a person has to mentally go through a large amount of information stored in the archive of the brain. Each squiggle contains a huge number of answer options. It is necessary to select inscriptions for all images. The more, the better.

The creation of associative chains allows the brain to generate visual images at its own discretion. Figurative rows need to be enlarged and reduced in the imagination, zoom in and out, painted in different colors, and change shape. There is also an interesting technique of agglutination, when mentally combine parts taken from different images. So, the idea of ​​an airplane was taken through long-term bird watching.

There is a great exercise for kids. The artist did not have time to finish painting the picture. Finish his work. But the second half should not differ from the first part of the picture. To complete the task, the child will have to mirror the second part of the picture. In the first stages, you can allow a mirror to be applied to the axis of the drawing to see how the right side should look.

Adults recommend exercises with a mirrored arrangement of letters. First, you need to carefully consider both types of signs with different slopes. Then they are shown only one single letter. It is necessary to quickly determine whether there is a normal or a mirror image in front of their eyes.

Matchstick exercise works well for teens and adults. You need to throw 5 pieces on the table, then look at them for 30 seconds and, without peeping, arrange the other 5 matches in the same order. You need to do this exercise until you get the right alignment. Then the number of matches is increased.

The next task involves writing a word in the center of the sheet. You should choose suitable definitions for it and write them down on the right. On the left side of the sheet, you need to place adjectives or participles, which in their meaning do not combine with the noun written in the center. For example, to the right of the concept of “dog” you can place the words: “yard”, “beautiful”, “thin”, “smart”, “hairy”, “spotted”, “playful”, “evil”, “teachable”. On the left, you need to come up with adjectives or participles that do not fit with the image of the dog: "liquid", "refractory", "pointed", "triangular", "lunar", "laughing", "cloudless".

Solving puzzles, in which there are letters, numbers, commas, images, arranged in different order, allows the child to make mental analysis, teaches to think in images, develops a creative personality. Search for homonyms with leading questions are also used in teaching to think figuratively. Leading questions are usually used. What word denotes a vine branch and an object that is used for drawing? What does both the gun piece and the wood piece mean?

Riddles form the ability to create in the imagination an image suitable for the verbal description of the signs of a specific action or object. Riddles should be pronounced expressively, logical emphasis should be placed and a pause should be made. Various natural phenomena, representatives of fauna and flora, people themselves and their way of life are hidden in the sentences intended for solving.