The Development of Voluntary Behavior in Preschool-Age Children

Abstract

In the literature on the psychology of the preschool-age child one finds it frequently stated that the preschool period is when the first signs of the development of volition [or the will] appear (Ushinsky [19], Sikorskii [17], Kornilov [6], and others). Empirical studies on the development of specific processes in the child, e.g., perception, memory, speech, and movement, have shown that the principal change these processes undergo in the three-to-seven-year-old child is that they become voluntary and subject to regulation.* Empirical studies have also been made, of course, on the specific problem of the development of voluntary behavior in the child (Ivanov [4], Gurevich [3], Gorbacheva [2]).