Psychological Factors in the Formation of Basic Mathematical Concepts at Preschool Age

The paper deals with the analysis of the important psychological factors in the formation of the mathematical concepts in the education of the preschool children. The author’s basic idea is to show the importance and necessity of increasing the share of planned and organized educational activities at certain periods of educational process. It is well-known that there is a continual struggle for dominance between neurons in the human’s brain, which are the product of new connections between active neurons and new ways of control. The aim of the paper is to emphasize the importance of developing mathematical concepts at an early age in the creation of neural connections that contribute to the development of logical structures and abstract thinking as well as to initiate further research in this area. This is a theoretical work, in which the descriptive method of identifying pre-school age period as vital to the future development of an individual. Mathematical contents have a major influence on the development of intellectual processes, in particular on the logical thinking and deduction. Therefore, a well-planned and systematic acquisition of basic mathematical concepts in early childhood, i.e. at preschool level, is highly recommended. This has been confirmed by numerous researches published in the relevant fields dealing with structure, capacity and developmental tendencies of human brain, all pointing to the fact that human brain is dominantly formed by the age of seven. First mathematical concepts are developed in the immediate environment surrounding every individual. That environment is the objective reality that exerts influence on perception, stimulating a cooperative activity of many senses (hearing, sight, touch) and resulting in a multitude of impressions. The higher the number of impressions that have worked on the senses, the higher the number of synapses immediately influencing the development of more complex neural activities.