The school was founded by its leader Alexander Luria, who—along with Mark Lebedinsky and Alexei Leont'ev—moved from Moscow to Kharkiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine at that time. The core of the group was formed by Luria, Lebedinsky and Leontiev and their Moscow colleagues, Zaporozhets and Bozhovich, along with a group of such local researchers as Gal'perin, Asnin, P. Zinchenko, Lukov, Khomenko, Kontsevaya, Rozenblyum, etc. The group conducted a wide range of psychological studies on concept formation in children, voluntary and involuntary memory, development of visual-operational thinking, voluntary behaviour, and reasoning, the role of orientation in thought and activity, etc. that laid the foundation for the psychological theory of activity.
P. I. Zinchenko and the Kharkiv school of developmental psychology
In the postwar period, the scientific work of the school developed under informal leadership of Pyotr Zinchenko in the field of the psychology of memory. The major achievement of the school is the systematic analysis of the phenomenon of involuntary memory from the standpoint of the activity approach in psychology. Soviet studies of involuntary memory carried out by the representatives of the Kharkiv school influenced psychological research both nationally and worldwide. The information processing or engineering psychology approach to memory and cognition was developed in the research by Zinchenko, Bocharova, Nevel'skii, Repkina. On the other hand, research on the role of involuntary memory in education and memory in thinking and personality development was conducted by Sereda, Ivanova, and associates. Another major area of research is the theory and practice of developmental teaching associated with such representatives of the Kharkiv school as Repkin, Bodanskii, Dusavitskii.
Selected publications of and about the school
Special journal issues
Soviet psychology, 1979–1980, 18 ,
Soviet psychology, 1983–84, 22.
Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 1994, 32 , and
Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 2003, 41
Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 2008, 46,
Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 2008, 46,
Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 2011, 49,
Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 2011, 49,
Selected papers In English
Ivanova, E. F.. The development of voluntary behaviour in preschoolers. Repetition of Z. M. Manuilenko's experiments. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 38, March–April 2000, p. 7–21.
Ivanova, E. F. & Nevoyennaya E.A.. The historical evolution of mnemonic processes. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 36, May–June 1998, p. 60–77.
Meacham, J. A.. The development of memory abilities in the individual and society. Human Development, 15, 205–228. Reprinted in J. G. Seamon, Recent contributions in memory and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. pp. 415–430.
Meacham, J.A.. Soviet investigations of memory development. In R.V. Kail & J.W. Hagen, Perspective on the Development of Memory and Cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Sophian, C., & Hagen, J. W.. Involuntary memory and the development of retrieval skills in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 26, 458–471.
