Dialectical Thinking as a Mechanism of Construction of Possible Relations for Senior Pre-school Children

Specifics of dialectical thinking consist in handling with oppositions. Current research was meant to check the following hypotheses: dialectical thinking can become a mechanism of construction of possible relations for pre-school children. We based on the assumption that application of dialectical mental acts allows think of possible relations taking in account relations existing in reality. "The possible" thus is created through mental transformation of the real, and is new comparing to that "real".2 stages of empirical research revealed a correlation between the level of development of dialectical thinking and development of the ability to anticipate s well as with the maturity of cyclic representations. Existence of this connection and qualitative analysis of the responses given by children while completing the tasks of traditional techniques and the ones specially designed by us for examination of dialectical thinking, allows one to suppose commonness of mental mechanisms that help to productively complete those tasks. Dialectical thinking is used as a mechanism of discovering opportunities in the situation and the anticipation is based on assuming and supposing of opportunities and their evaluation. Cyclic representations reflect transformation of the possible to real, demonstrating reality of the "possibility". (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.