what is it in psychology and how to develop it? Exercises for training. How to develop professional observation?

Not every per­son is able to notice the sig­nif­i­cant details of any phe­nom­e­na and facts. An obser­vant per­son has a spe­cial visu­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty, which can be devel­oped with the help of spe­cial train­ing.

Obser­va­tion is a qual­i­ty of a per­son, expressed in the abil­i­ty to focus one’s atten­tion on the per­cep­tion of one object and see sub­tle prop­er­ties in it. It is com­mon for an obser­vant per­son to sin­gle out sig­nif­i­cant details of events that escape the atten­tion of oth­er peo­ple. Obser­va­tion is close­ly relat­ed to the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sub­ject and the object of obser­va­tion:

• the abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize by the behav­ior and appear­ance of a per­son his inter­nal state, men­tal data;
• dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of signs through the phys­iog­nom­ic mask, ges­tures, pos­ture, pos­ture, gait of the indi­vid­ual;
• inter­est in a per­son as an object with the for­ma­tion of selec­tiv­i­ty of per­cep­tion, the rapid cre­ation of the expe­ri­ence of observ­ing an indi­vid­ual and see­ing his men­tal states;
• empa­thy man­i­fest­ed in the process­es of inter­ac­tion between peo­ple, emo­tion­al respon­sive­ness, impres­sion­abil­i­ty, antic­i­pa­tion of the devel­op­ment of the behav­ior of anoth­er per­son.

Pur­pose­ful and con­scious study of real­i­ty lies in obser­va­tion. The observ­er does not attract the atten­tion of oth­ers, remains on the side­lines. He notices and eval­u­ates events depend­ing on the tar­get set­ting, the impor­tant com­po­nents of which are pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion, clar­i­ty of the task and activ­i­ty of obser­va­tion. An impor­tant role is played by the frag­men­ta­tion of the prob­lem, the set­ting of par­tic­u­lar and more spe­cif­ic tasks. For the suc­cess of obser­va­tion, plan­ning and sys­tem­at­ic are impor­tant fac­tors.

FROMThe abil­i­ty to pay atten­tion to small details is impor­tant in pro­fes­sion­al work. It is impor­tant for teach­ers, edu­ca­tors, psy­chol­o­gists, doc­tors to rec­og­nize the inter­nal state of anoth­er indi­vid­ual by appear­ance and behav­ior. This qual­i­ty is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for law enforce­ment offi­cers. Through obser­va­tion, a pro­fes­sion­al can draw up a clear psy­cho­log­i­cal por­trait of a per­son.

Obser­va­tion opens the way to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the world. It allows the sub­ject to be bet­ter aware of events and facts hid­den from the eyes of ordi­nary peo­ple. The abil­i­ty to notice sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences in iden­ti­cal con­cepts is a real art. An atten­tive per­son has great oppor­tu­ni­ties for self-improve­ment. Devel­oped obser­va­tion allows the sub­ject to instant­ly assess the sit­u­a­tion and make the right deci­sion, helps to reveal the poten­tial of the indi­vid­ual and the gift of pre­dict­ing their own future actions. Insight is expressed in the art of see­ing and feel­ing anoth­er per­son, fore­see­ing his behav­ior.

The abil­i­ty to men­tal­ly make a fore­cast in var­i­ous life ups and downs saves an obser­vant per­son from falling into the tricks of scam­mers. The abil­i­ty to notice some­thing new in famil­iar things is char­ac­ter­is­tic of writ­ers, artists, pro­duc­tion inno­va­tors, inven­tors, and sci­en­tists.

Obser­va­tion is close­ly inter­twined with recep­tiv­i­ty, curios­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty. These qual­i­ties, formed with the aim of know­ing the world, are acquired in life expe­ri­ence. They are use­ful to a per­son in labor and edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties, in every­day life. Sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty demon­strates matu­ri­ty. It allows the indi­vid­ual to delve into him­self. Curios­i­ty gives rise to the desire to end­less­ly cog­nize real­i­ty. The inquis­i­tive mind of a child is evi­dence of this asser­tion. Feel­ings and sen­sa­tions aris­ing from the per­cep­tion of seen and heard infor­ma­tion are man­i­fest­ed in cre­ativ­i­ty per­son. The more the sub­ject receives infor­ma­tion when rec­og­niz­ing unknown facts, the more his work is dis­tin­guished by diver­si­ty and ver­sa­til­i­ty.

Curios­i­ty and inquis­i­tive­ness allow an indi­vid­ual to notice valu­able fea­tures and signs in every­day things that are not notice­able to every­one. In every­day life, poor­ly devel­oped obser­va­tion does not par­tic­u­lar­ly harm, but some­times it can fail. An urgent need to devel­op this qual­i­ty is required by a per­son who often inter­acts with oth­er peo­ple.

Obser­va­tion begins to form dur­ing the game from child­hood. In the future, its devel­op­ment occurs dur­ing the obser­va­tion of var­i­ous nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na, the behav­ior of ani­mals, the flow­er­ing of plants. Through­out life, you need to open your soul to new emo­tions when gain­ing knowl­edge. Try to pay atten­tion to the objects around you. Look close­ly at nature. It is very impor­tant not only to mem­o­rize indi­vid­ual fea­tures and nuances, but also to pass them through your­self. The acquired abil­i­ty not to remain indif­fer­ent to the world around you will notice­ably increase your sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty.

To test your pow­ers of obser­va­tion, place 10 objects on the table. Then look at them for a few sec­onds. Next, you need to turn away and repro­duce in mem­o­ry each of the ten items. Try to describe them in great detail. It is pos­si­ble to improve pro­fes­sion­al obser­va­tion with the help of spe­cial tech­niques, set­ting spe­cif­ic tasks for your­self. For exam­ple, it is nec­es­sary to con­stant­ly com­pare and con­trast var­i­ous objects, to estab­lish a con­nec­tion between them and their inter­ac­tion with each oth­er. Notice the small­est changes in var­i­ous phe­nom­e­na.

Peri­od­i­cal­ly describe the char­ac­ter­is­tic facial fea­tures of your acquain­tances. When meet­ing with them, pay atten­tion to small details, and do not try to remem­ber a holis­tic image. Look into the eyes of a per­son, alter­nate­ly con­sid­er his nose, mouth, eye­brows, chin, hair col­or, head shape. Care­ful­ly study the appear­ance of the sub­ject.

Try to focus on the var­i­ous items of cloth­ing you know and strangers. Choose from 4 to 10 details, cre­ate a log­i­cal chain. In the evening, repro­duce them in your mem­o­ry. On the way to the store or to the place of work, pay atten­tion to the build­ings you meet. Count the num­ber of win­dows and doors, remem­ber the shape of the roof and the loca­tion of the cor­nices. From the details, move on to a holis­tic per­cep­tion of the whole house.

Once you enter the room, take a quick look around. Try to take a men­tal pho­to­graph. Pay atten­tion to the size of the room, the col­or of the walls, the num­ber of chairs, tables, cab­i­nets, paint­ings. Com­ing out of there, restore what you saw in your mem­o­ry. Go back, com­pare the imag­i­nary pic­ture with the orig­i­nal. Repeat the steps until you get the per­fect result. Every evening, replay in your mind the faces of all the peo­ple you met dur­ing the day. Try to remem­ber all dai­ly events, objects and phe­nom­e­na you have seen. Dai­ly prac­tice con­tributes to the fact that a per­son begins to pay atten­tion to the incon­spic­u­ous details of the world around him dur­ing the day.

You can train obser­va­tion with the help of numer­i­cal tables. They begin train­ing with a men­tal arrange­ment of num­bers from 1 to 25 in order in a grid with ran­dom­ly arranged num­bers. This task should take no more than 4 min­utes to com­plete.

Then you can move on to a more com­plex ver­sion of an enter­tain­ing table, which is a ran­dom­ly scat­tered num­bers from 1 to 90. You need to look for all the num­bers in order with your eyes. With the help of the table, any­one can test their pow­ers of obser­va­tion. If a per­son men­tal­ly placed all the num­bers with­in 5–10 min­utes, then he has excep­tion­al pow­ers of obser­va­tion. If you found all the num­bers in 10–15 min­utes, that’s great; 15–20 min­utes is good; in 20–25 min­utes — sat­is­fac­to­ry.

You can devel­op the skill of obser­va­tion by doing very effec­tive exer­cis­es.

• Pick up any item. Look at it very care­ful­ly, try to remem­ber the thing with­out miss­ing the small­est details. Then you need to close your eyes, and then men­tal­ly repro­duce the image. Open­ing your eyes, look at the object of mem­o­ry and under­stand what you missed when you men­tal­ly recre­ate the object. Then you need to close your eyes again and remem­ber the already improved image. The next stage involves the image of a thing on a piece of paper from mem­o­ry. Com­pare the drawn object with the real object, add the miss­ing details.
• Try to observe the envi­ron­ment for a month with the idea that you need to cap­ture every­thing you see with col­ors on can­vas. In this way, Kon­stan­tin Paus­tovsky advised to increase his own pow­ers of obser­va­tion. In pub­lic trans­port, look at pas­sen­gers from this posi­tion.