GENESIS OF THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT IN THE HERITAGE OF OLEKSANDR NECHAIEV

The article deals with the issue of the development of theoretical foundations and practice of experimentation in the legacy of a prominent domestic psychologist of the end of the 19th - early 20th century Oleksandr Nechaiev. General comprehension and objective evaluation of theoretical and practical heritage of the past transforms the history of psychology into an essential part of psychological knowledge. The aim of the paper is to study and analyze his scientific works in the field of psychological experimentation. O. Nechaev and his colleagues firstly conducted researches on the effectiveness of the methods in the laboratory. If the method was promising, the experiment was continued at school. The first experiments of this type were aimed at examining leading associations in children of different ages, memorization of words of different meanings, attention, reading skills, ways of memorization, speed of mental work of students, etc. Natural experiments were not commonly used in the investigated period. It was the laboratory conditions under which the first experimental programs and methods of studying attention, memory, interests, performance, and suggestiveness of schoolchildren were developed and tested. The transfer of experiments from scientific laboratories to the natural conditions of the educational process (school classrooms) started taking place at the beginning of the twentieth century. O. Nechaev emphasized the importance of taking into account the basic principles of conducting a psychological experiment (naturalness, objectivity, integrity, and observance of the equivalence of conditions), which contributed to obtaining reliable results and improving the quality of schooling.