Pyotr Ivanovich Zinchenko (Пётр Иванович Зинченко) (1903, Nikolayevsk

Nikolayevsk

Nikolayevsk is a town and the administrative center of Nikolayevsky District of Volgograd Oblast, Russia, located on the left shores of the Volga River. Population:...

 - 1969) was a Soviet developmental psychologist

Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...

, a student of Lev Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...

 and Alexei Leontiev and one of the major representatives of the Kharkov School of Psychology

Kharkov School of Psychology

Kharkiv School of Psychology is a tradition of developmental psychological research conducted in the paradigm of Lev Vygotsky's "sociocultural theory of mind" and Leontiev's psychological activity theory....

. In 1963, Zinchenko founded and headed the department of psychology at Kharkiv University

Kharkiv University

The University of Kharkiv or officially the Vasyl Karazin Kharkiv National University is one of the major universities in Ukraine, and earlier in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union...

 until his death in 1969.

His son is a contemporary Russian psychologist Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko.

Research

The main theme of Zinchenko's research is involuntary memory

Involuntary memory

Involuntary memory is a conception of human memory in which cues encountered in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort. Its binary opposite, voluntary memory, is a deliberate effort to recall the past. The term was coined by French author Marcel Proust...

, studied from the perspective of the activity approach in psychology. In a series of studies, Zinchenko demonstrated that recall of the material to be remembered strongly depends on the kind of activity directed on the material, the motivation

Motivation

Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...

 to perform the activity, the level of interest in the material and the degree of involvement in the activity. Thus, he showed that following the task of sorting material in experimental settings, human subjects demonstrate a better involuntary recall rate than in the task of voluntary material memorization.

Zinchenko's pioneering work on involuntary memory became a foundation for the development of Leontiev's activity theory

Activity theory

Activity theory is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N...

 and psychological research on memory in Soviet developmental psychology.

Major works

• Zinchenko, P. I. (1939). O zabyvanii i vosproizvedenii shkol'nyx znanij [On forgetting and remembering academic knowledge]. Kandidat
  Kandidat
  The Candidate of Sciences degree is a first post-graduate scientific degree in some former Eastern Bloc countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, which is awarded for original research that constitutes a significant contribution to a scientific field. The degree was first introduced in the USSR on...
  
  (doctoral) thesis. (О забывании и воспроизведении школьных знаний. In «Научные записки Харьковского педагогического института иностранных языков», 1939; т. I, pp. 189–213; Also in Ильясов, И.И., & Ляудис, В.Л. Хрестоматия по возрастной и педагогической психологии. Работы советских авторов 1918-1945 г. М. 1980)
• Zinchenko, P. I. (1939). Problema neproizvol'nogo zapominaniya (Проблема непроизвольного запоминания. In «Научные записки Харьковского педагогического института иностранных языков», 1939; т. I, pp. 145–187) -- Published in English as --
  • Zinchenko, P. I. (1983–84). The problem of involuntary memory. Soviet Psychology XXII, 55-111.
• Zinchenko, P. I. (1961). Neproizvol'noe zapominanie [Involuntary memory] (in Russian). Moscow: APN RSFSR. -- Chapter 4 (pp. 172–207) is published in English as --
  • Zinchenko, P. I. (1981). Involuntary memory and the goal-directed nature of activity. In J.V. Wertsch (ed.) The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology (pp. 300–340). Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, Inc.
• Smirnov, A. A. & Zinchenko, P. I. (1969). Problems in the psychology of memory. In M. Cole & I. Maltzman (eds.), A handbook of contemporary Soviet psychology. New York: Plenum Press.

External sources

• Bocharova, S. P. (1978). Problemy psikhologii pamyati v trudakh P. I. Zinchenko [Problems of the psychology of memory in the works of P. I. Zinchenko]. Voprosy psikhologii, 1978, #5. -- In English in Soviet Psychology, 1979, Summer, 17(4), 104-113.
• Sereda, G. K. (1984). O znachenii nauchnogo vklada P. I. Zinchenko v razvitie psikhologii pamyati [The significance of P. I. Zinchenko's contribution to the development of the psychology of memory (On his 80th birthday)]. Voprosy psikhologii, 1984, #6. -- In English in Soviet Psychology, 1994, #2.
• Laktionov & Sereda (1993). Deyatel'nostnaya paradigma i voprosy pamyati v trudakh P. I. Zinchenko [Activity paradigm and memory research in the work of P. I. Zinchenko] http://www.voppsy.ru/issues/1993/934/934102.htm. Voprosy psikhologii, 1993, #4.
• Mescheryakov, B. G. (2003). P. I. Zinchenko i psikhologiya pamyati. [P.I. Zinchenko and the psychology of memory] http://www.humanities.edu.ru/db/msg/50518. Voprosy psikhologii, 2003, #4.