Petr Ivanovich Zinchenko (Russian: Пётр Иванович Зинченко) (12 July 1903 – 17 February 1969) was a Soviet developmental psychologist, a student of Lev Vygotsky and Alexei Leontiev and himself one of the major representatives of the Kharkov School of Psychology. In 1963, Zinchenko founded and headed the department of psychology at Kharkiv University until his death in 1969. He had one child, Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko, who later became a psychologist.

Research

The main theme of Zinchenko's research was involuntary memory, 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 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 and psychological research on memory in Soviet developmental psychology.

Major works

External sources