Российская психология в пространстве мировой науки

The idea that physiological explanation of sensory processes and perception is not exhaustive can be heard more and more often from experts on cognitive processes today. It is significant that the main topic of the lecture delivered by Cambridge professor J. D. Mollon at the opening of the 29th European Congress on Visual Perception (ECVP 2006), which brought together psychologists, physiologists and specialists on artificial vision from different countries, – was the discrepancy between the physiology of color perception and the subjective perception of colors, which is manifested ever more strongly with more successful research on physiological mechanisms. «Should we not look for a key to the mystery of color perception outside our body?» (Mollon, 2006), – he asked.

Ananiev three-component model of the structure of human cognitive processes

In the structure of human cognitive processes, B. G. Ananiev singled out three types of components (mechanisms):

• functional,

• operational,

• motivational.

The development of the functional mechanisms conforms to the laws of ontogenesis. Operational mechanisms develop as the result of assimilation of the cultural & historical experience of humankind (as Vygotsky stated). The requirements of human practice potentially contradict nature; for example, professional activities may require that sensory processes escape age-related degradation. The controversy between the natural laws of development of psycho-physiological functions and culturally determined operations is resolved by way of training, so that psycho-physiological functions are structured and reconstructed to comply with the requirements of practice. The direction in which functions develop is determined by individual motivational mechanisms, which set targets of human activity and provide energy for reconstruction.

The quicker the advance of technology while humankind creates itself a new habitat, the more the idea is proved that was originally declared and substantiated by Ananiev: the idea of the continuing evolution of human Sensory-Perceptive Organization under the influence of the progress of civilization. More confirmation is provided of Ananiev's idea that an important factor of this evolution is the «progressive development of the instruments of labor, and technical means that broaden the field of sensory cognition» (Ananiev, 1977, p. 88).

Anybody who has ever dealt professionally with complex modern visual devices (e.g. a thermal imager) can witness that an image of the real world on the screen of such a device seems to be a chaos of spots to an inexperienced person. And that chaos cannot be transformed into the familiar picture of the world by way of any algorithmic transformation. But, amazingly, by gaining more and more experience working with such a device, by gaining experience of real activity, moving in the field, for example, – an operator learns to see the real world in the images on the screen. How a person learns to see the world looking on such images cannot be explained by response of any innate detectors, as there are no such images in nature – they were created by human civilization.

Ananiev's concept of two qualitatively different stages in Human Life-Span Development, and the two types of aging

Ananiev specified the two-phase nature of human development during the life span: «In the first phase, general, frontal progress of functions takes place in the course of growth and in the earliest evolutionary changes of maturity» (Ananiev, 1977, p. 201). The laws of ontogenesis play the key role in this period. The second phase differs drastically from the first; it lasts from the onset of maturity to the end of life. This second phase begins at the highest level of functional developments of the first phase and superimposes it. So the peak of the functional development is reached at later stages of maturity, while «the optimum of specialized functions may coincide with the imminent involution of the general characteristics of the same functions» (Ananiev, 1977, p.202). The universal generic program of human development loses the supremacy in adulthood; to be more precise, the development in adulthood is secured by the active forces within the human psyche that counteract the inevitable ageing: «At the second phase of the functions' evolution, their specialisation …occurs» (Ananiev, 1977, p.202).