According to psychologists, an individual can interact with the environment only if he has his own, individual "picture of what is happening." The subject, impartially forming the image of the object, implements the process of mental reflection. Moreover, the image of the object in this case refers to the properties, phenomena, events of the external or internal world. What is nevertheless such a mental reflection and what is its meaning for the subject and for the person in the first place?
The essence of mental reflection.
Within the framework of the Soviet psychological school, representatives of the cultural-historical concept were studying the process of mental reflection. Mental reflection there is understood as a tentatively regulatory process of forming the conditions in which the activity takes place. The result of such a reflection of the psyche is an image, i.e. subjective aggregate of data on the external or internal world, which allows directing activities to satisfy needs. An important observation should be made here: mental reflection is always a process that is completely connected with the subject himself. He is an individual image, and that without the subject who created it, it does not make sense. In addition, the image is not static, it exists only at the moment of the process of reflection of objective reality directly by mental processes. They, in turn, are inseparable and not isolated from each other. The idea of the psyche processes as “thinking,” “perception,” or “imagination” is only a model of the psyche; in reality, it is integral and united.
Mental reflection serves to create a structured and integral image from dissected objects of reality.
B. F. Lomov singled out the levels of mental reflection:
- Sensory-perceptive is the basic level of construction of mental images that arises in the development process in the first place, but does not lose its relevance in subsequent activities. The subject, based on the information received due to the stimulation of the senses by real objects, builds his own tactics of behavior. Simply put, a stimulus causes a reaction: an event that occurs in real time affects the subsequent action of the subject, determines it.
- Level of submission. An image can arise without the direct influence of the object on the senses of the subject, that is, imagination, memory, imaginative thinking. Due to the repeated occurrence of an object in the zone of perception of the subject, some of the most important features of the first are remembered, eliminated from secondary, which creates an image independent of the immediate presence of the stimulus. A person learns to operate already with images of objects, relatively speaking, seen once before, not represented in the current situation. The main function of this level of mental reflection: planning, control and correction of actions in the internal plan, drawing up standards.
- Verbally logical thinking or speech-cognitive level. Operations of this level are even less related to the event series of the current time. The individual operates with logical concepts and techniques that have developed during the cultural and historical development of mankind. Abstracting from his own direct experience, from imagination and memory of the events that took place in his life, he orientates himself and builds activities based on the experience of mankind as a whole. Those concepts, definitions and conclusions that were not made by him. This provides an opportunity to plan and regulate events of various directions and temporal remoteness, up to planning a person’s life path.
Despite the significant difference between the third and first, initial levels: the processes of sensory and rational regulation of activity constantly flow from one to another, forming a mental reflection in the diversity of its levels and images.