THE INFLUENCE OF THE PROCESSES OF COGNITION AND INTERPRETATION OF LIFE EXPERIENCE ON PERSONAL GROWTH OF PUPILS AND YOUTH

Personal development from primary school age to adolescence from the viewpoint of post-non-classical hermeneutical methodology was analyzed in this article. Processes of understanding and interpretation of life experience are viewed as one of the most important factors of personal development in people of different age periods. In view of age and psychological characteristics the process of generation of text-narratives by primary school children, teenagers and youth was investigated. It was clarified that a self narrative as a story about personal life history has unequal functions on different stages of personal development. In the primary school age the narrative generation provides for personal understanding and development; in adolescence it allows self implementation and designing being accepted by the reference group that enables to increase one's social status; in youth it promotes self-realization and self-revealization, on the basis of what the authorial (independent) narratives as a means of self-designing may be written. The semiotic analysis of text-narratives by people of different age groups defined the dynamics of personal development. The criteria of analysis of actualization appear to be the main experience characteristics: dialogueness, openness, self-identity, self-consistency, inherent value. The comparative analysis of peculiarities of understanding and interpretation of personal experience by primary school children, adolescents and the young people indicates the gradual formation of the major characteristics of the personal experience that provide for development of authorship in writing the self life history.