Higher mental functions are mental processes that are social in origin, mediated in structure, arbitrary in terms of the nature of regulation and systemically related to each other.
Higher mental functions are one of the basic concepts of modern psychology, introduced by L. S. Vygotsky and further developed by A. R. Luria, A. N. Leontiev, A. V. Zaporozhets, D. B. Elkonin, P. Ya. Galperin and others
Higher mental functions are cultural, not natural mental processes; they are determined not by genetics, but by society and human culture.
Once again, the main points characterizing the HPF. These are the functions:
- Social in origin — says that this is not something innate, these processes are formed in vivo with the direct influence of culture (family, school, etc.). The main mechanism is internalization, internalization of the external into the internal.
- Mediated by structure — cultural signs are the internal instrument for their implementation. First of all, this is speech, in general, ideas about what is accepted and understandable in culture.
- Arbitrary in nature of regulation — a person can consciously control them.
WPF List
Memory, thinking, speech and perception are confidently attributed to the higher mental functions. Whether attention, will, motivation in general, internal feelings and social emotions should be attributed to higher mental functions is a moot point.
The main difficulty here is that, by definition, WPFs are arbitrary functions, and the arbitrariness of the second list is questionable. For a developed person, these are completely arbitrary functions; for a mass personality, these functions are involuntary.