Introduction: The basic concepts of contemporary psychology -- The dialectical materialist sources of the psychological concept of activity -- Activity, the psyche and consciousness -- Problems of the child's psychical development -- Upbringing and instruction as the universal form of the child's psychical development -- The basic periods of the child's psychical development --Personality development in childhood -- The theory of empirical thinking in pedagogical psychology -- The theory of empirical generalization and empirical thinking (the thinking of the understanding) -- The use of the theory of empirical thinking in the design of school curricula -- Basic propositions of the dialectical materialist theory of thinking --Practical activity as the basis of human thinking -- The ideal as the reflection of the object : the uniqueness of human sensibility -- The distinguishing features of empirical thinking --The specific content of theoretical thinking -- Modeling as a means of scientific thinking -- The sensible and the rational in thinking -- The method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete -- The distinguishing features of theoretical and empirical generalization -- Learning activity in the primary school age -- Some questions of the history of learning activity -- The content and structure of learning activity -- The psychical development of primary school children in the process of learning activity -- The link between the theory of learning activity and the structure of school subjects -- A description of experimental primary school curricula -- The psychical development of primary school children in the process of experimental instruction -- Appendix: from the history of general and child psychology -- L.S. Vygotsky's views on the determination of the individual human consciousness -- The concepts of activity and the psyche in the works of A.N. Leontiev-- Supplementary material.