Ontogenesis of consciousness on early stages of life: fundamental characteristics, typology and developmentof pre-verbal meanings

This article is devoted to generalization of theoretical and experimental data of children's consciousness studies on the early stages ofontogenesis. The views on the content, structure and development of the consciousness, the category of ordinary and imaginary reality,fundamental structures of the consciousness (presentation of a mental object, space, time and causality) are given. The specific characterof their formation and development in children's mind is described considering the experimental data accumulated in the works of J.Piaget, E.V. Sybbotsky and other researchers. General methodological guidelines of reality representation and the basics of psychologicalanalysis of the consciousness problem in Russian psychology in the works of L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev are considered in thearticle. The author systematized a few developments of Russian researchers aimed at studying the children's picture of the world: inparticular, the idea of pre-verbal ways of reality representation in the works of A.P. Stetsenko and I.E. Isenina, where the conditions ofsubjective systems of meanings in the evolving consciousness of a child are mentioned. The basic forms of the meaning systems fixationof the child's mind and the laws of their functioning on the early stages of pre-verbal ontogenesis are revealed. The paper describes theconcept of stages of ontogenetic development of the systems of meanings according to the laws of changing activity throughout thedevelopment. It is shown, in particular, that the basis for the formation of the first systems of meanings of a baby presents the emotionalpersonalcommunication with adults, manipulative and subject-manipulative activity of a child. The analysis carried out in the frameworkof this article proves once again the need for an empirical study of the initial ontogenetical forms of reality representation (systemsof meanings of a child in various areas of the personal experience), especially in connection with the fact that "the possibility of furthercarrying out of the ideas of the specificity of the human psyche development" depends much on identifying and conceptualisation of theregularities of primary representation formation of the social world by a child.

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