Introduction
The concept of perezhivanie is increasingly becoming central in contemporary psychological and pedagogical research (Taype-Huarca, Zavalaga-del Carpio, Fernández-González, 2023; Christodoulakis, Vidal Carulla, Adbo, 2021; Konokotin, Zaretsky, Ulanovskaya, Rubtsova, 2025). Genuine interest in this phenomenon is driven, on the one hand, the role assigned to perezhivanie within the cultural-historical paradigm, and on the other, by the lack of clarity and ambiguity surrounding this concept despite existing studies (Veresov, Fleer, 2016).
The systematic review of recent publications conducted by N. Christodoulakis and colleagues identified three main research directions in this field: 1) review studies presenting various theoretical approaches to interpreting perezhivanie as a psychological phenomenon; 2) empirical studies examining the potential of play, theater, and other forms of intervention to evoke perezhivanie, which in turn leads to significant changes in the development of executive functions, self-awareness, and other processes; 3) studies investigating the role of perezhivanie in preschool development (Christodoulakis, Vidal Carulla, Adbo, 2021). The third group of works encompasses several lines of inquiry. In particular, perezhivanie is examined: in the context of child–parent and child–adult interactions; from the perspective of its educational and developmental potential; and as a component of children’s play activity (Christodoulakis, Vidal Carulla, Adbo, 2021).
This latter direction takes on new significance in the context of contemporary “digital” childhood, when preschoolers interact with digital devices almost constantly in one way or another. Digital play (hereafter — DP) is popular among contemporary children alongside traditional forms of play: role-play, dramatization games, board games, sports games, etc. The use of digital products and gadgets during play activities, as well as children’s constant transitions between virtual and real play spaces, are distinctive characteristics of convergent play (Edwards et al., 2020; Salomatova, 2023).
Although attempts have been made in the literature to describe the role of perezhivanie in traditional play (Veraksa, Veresov, 2022; Veraksa, Veresov, Sukhikh, 2022; Sukhikh, Veresov, Veraksa, 2022), only a few studies address the issue of perezhivanie in digital play (Veresov, 2019). The author of the present work was unable to find studies addressing the place of perezhivanie within convergent play.
The aims of this article are: 1) to analyze the understanding of the phenomenon of “perezhivanie” that has developed within the cultural-historical tradition; 2) to determine the role and place of perezhivanie in traditional play and in DP; 3) to summarize existing empirical studies on preschool children’s perezhivanie.
Materials and methods
A systemic analysis was conducted of works by researchers working within the framework of cultural-historical psychology and developing Lev Vygotsky’s ideas about the phenomenon of perezhivanie.
Results
Perezhivanie in the system of concepts of cultural-historical psychology
Perezhivanie occupies one of the central places in cultural-historical psychology; however, neither in the works of Lev Vygotsky nor in those of other classical scholars is there a unified concept of this phenomenon. The notion of perezhivanie is used by Vygotsky both in works devoted to the analysis of theatrical activity and in studies revealing the driving forces of child development. Moreover, Vygotsky’s interpretation of perezhivanie evolves from work to work (Vygotsky, 1984; Vygotsky, 2001; Vygotsky, 2004).
Describing the role of perezhivanie in child development, L.S. Vygotsky emphasizes the special role of the environment. The author distinguishes between the environment understood as a set of external factors surrounding the child and the social situation of development, defined as a “…unique, specific to a given age, exceptional, singular and unrepeatable relationship between the child and the surrounding reality, above all social reality…” (Vygotsky, 1984). In other words, the social situation of development is not something consisting separately of the child and the environment; rather, it represents a system of unique and complex relations between the child and the social environment (Veresov, 2016). Child development is influenced not by some absolute characteristics of the environment (recall Vygotsky’s example of children of a mother suffering from alcohol dependence), but by how the child perezhivanies (here and further highlighted by me. — O. S.) the social situation of development. L.S. Vygotsky compares perezhivanie to a prism that “…refracts the influence of the environment on the child… that is, the relationship existing between the child and the environment, … the way the child becomes aware of, comprehends, and emotionally relates to a particular event. This prism determines the role and influence of the environment on the development of, for example, the child’s character and the child's psychological development, etc." (Vygotsky, 2001). From this definition it follows: 1) it is precisely perezhivanie that determines how a particular event/phenomenon/object in the environment will affect the child’s development; 2) every perezhivanie contains both an environmental component and a personal component. Let us consider these two ideas in more detail.
1) Expanding on the idea that experiencing determines the role of a particular environmental component in child development, it should be noted that, on the one hand, the social environment itself is not static; its various components change over time. This, in turn, means that different components of the environment change at different times and, consequently, different psychological characteristics of the child's personality are qualitatively transformed through experiencing during different periods. On the other hand, the child themself is not static, and their perception of the environment also changes as they develop.
The metamorphoses of the child's personality and perezhivanie associated with environmental perception are described through the concept of crisis. If personal changes entail a transformation in the system of needs and motives of activity, an age-related crisis occurs (Veresov, Fleer, 2016; Elkonin, 2007). In addition, a child may encounter a macro-crisis – an acute crisis event (for example, parental divorce), the perezhivanie of which introduces qualitative changes into their development (Veresov, 2019). There are also micro-crises, associated with role play, understood as a series of micro–social situations of development. In play, such micro–social situations manifest as quarrels with peers, the need to follow rules, to perform a role, and so on. Due to the presence of an imaginary situation in play, the child learns to perezhivanie such situations as micro-crises and, as a result, undergoes dramatic perezhivanie (Sukhikh, Veresov, Veraksa, 2022).
2) Now let's turn to the idea that, in the structure of experiencing, in addition to the environmental component, there is also a personal component.
In the cultural-historical tradition, the understanding of personality structure starts from L.S. Vygotsky's idea of the unity of intellectual and affective spheres. In a number of works (A.N. Leontiev, D.B. Elkonin, L.I. Bozhovich, G.G. Kravtsov, and others), a third component of the personality structure is introduced, which is related to the concepts of will/regulation/voluntariness/motivation (Smirnova, 2015). Thus, in the most general form, one can speak of the cognitive, affective-emotional, and regulatory-volitional spheres in the structure of a child’s personality (Semago, Semago, 2020).
The development of a preschooler's cognitive sphere includes the development of attention, memory, speech, imagination, and thinking. The development of the affective-emotional sphere is connected with the ability to control one’s emotions and adequately respond to others’ emotions. In the course of maturation, moral emotions emerge — the child learns to evaluate others’ actions (as good or bad) and becomes acquainted with concepts such as love, attachment, and friendship. The development of the regulatory-volitional sphere includes forming the ability to manage one’s behavior and mental activity, and to master complex rules and cultural norms.
Some studies suggest that perezhivanie should largely be attributed to the affective-emotional sphere (Gavrilova, Kornienko, 2025). However, this approach seems insufficient, since the realization of perezhivanie requires not only emotions but also a certain level of development of higher mental functions and volitional processes. In other words, it would be more accurate to speak of perezhivanie as a property of the child’s personality as a whole.
It is also important to note that personality development occurs within activity under the influence of internal (e.g., brain development) and external factors (expanding social interaction with age). Higher mental functions initially arise in joint activity as forms of collective behavior and only later become individual functions. Therefore, the question of the relationship between the concepts of perezhivanie and activity in preschool age is particularly important (Karabanova, 2024).
Activity and perezhivanie
The concept of activity is almost as multifaceted as the concept of perezhivanie. A.N. Leontiev understood activity as processes that correspond to their respective needs. The concept of activity is linked to the concept of motive as the object for the sake of which activity is carried out (Leontiev, 1959).
Activity itself represents a sufficiently broad category, allowing for the distinct identification of the construct of leading activity. Leading activity is understood as an activity in the form of which other, new, types of activity emerge and within which they differentiate. In other words, leading activity is an activity whose development determines the most significant changes in the mental processes and psychological characteristics of a child's personality at a given stage of their development (Leontiev, 1959). The role of leading activity as the primary, dominant activity in the process of personality formation is so great that, as A.N. Leontiev indicates, the foundation of personality lies in the relations of subordination, or hierarchy, of human activities, generated by the course of their development (Leontiev, 1974).
How does activity arise in the process of a child's personality development?
By the end of the first year of life, motivating representations emerge in the child, i.e., "...affectively charged representations that prompt the child's behavior despite external environmental influences" (Bozhovich, 1978). The emergence of these representations transforms the child into a subject. The awareness of oneself as a subject occurs in early childhood when a systemic new psychological formation arises, which is usually associated with the appearance of the word "I." The process of self-knowledge begins with knowing oneself as a subject of action. Recall that during early childhood, a child often likes to repeat the same action, carefully studying the action process itself and the changes that occur with the object. Many researchers consider this very moment as the beginning of the formation of the child's personality proper. Gradually, the child becomes involved in various types of activities, which happens during social interaction. In preschool age, during play activity (the leading activity of this life stage), the child becomes aware of their "I" and their place in social relations (Bozhovich, 1978).
What place does perezhivanie occupy in relation to activity in preschool age?
F.E. Vasilyuk developed the idea of perezhivanie as an activity applied to adult perezhivanie. He defines perezhivanie as an activity aimed at restructuring the psychological world, directed at establishing semantic correspondence between consciousness and being, and he sees the goal of perezhivanies as increasing the meaningfulness of life. He viewed perezhivanie as a special form of activity for overcoming critical situations. According to F.E. Vasilyuk, the object of perezhivanie consists of critical life situations that are irreversible and beyond human control, while the perezhivanies themselves are subject to human will (Vasilyuk, 1984).
Due to the peculiarities of personal development, a preschooler does not yet possess such a developed form of perezhivanie; for them, perezhivanie is not an independent activity. Gradually, along with the development of the cognitive, affective-emotional, and regulatory-volitional spheres, and with the development of activity as such, the restructuring of the system of motives, etc., perezhivanie as an element of a child's activity transforms into the independent activity of an adult. A child's perezhivanie itself has neither a goal, nor a motive, nor other properties inherent in volitional activity in general and in the activity of adult perezhivanie in particular. It can be said that for a preschooler, perezhivanie develops within their activity. Perezhivanie is not consciously perceived by the child as something separate, existing outside of activity; rather, the child's choice of activity is determined by the desire to perezhivanie a particular feeling. Here, play activity should be specifically noted. Play is considered the leading activity of preschool age, and within it, all the new psychological formations of preschool age develop: intentionality, imagination, visual-figurative thinking, subordination of motives, and others. Furthermore, a child's perezhivanie develops within play.
Play and perezhivanie
According to L.S. Vygotsky, play arises as a form of realizing a child's spontaneous desires that cannot be realized in reality. However, it is not individual desires that are realized in play, but "generalized affects" (Vygotsky, 2004). In other words, the essence of play can be formulated as perezhivanie not a specific life event, but the affective reactions that such events evoke in the child. Nevertheless, the child themselves does not realize the motives of their play: they play without realizing that what they truly want is to relive certain affects again and again. It appears that in the process of play activity, the child "becomes acquainted" with what perezhivanie is, trying to "feel it through."
Play, like perezhivanie, correlates with both the cognitive and affective-emotional spheres of a child's personality: L.S. Vygotsky notes that "… studies show that not only where we deal with intellectually underdeveloped children, but also where there is underdevelopment of the affective sphere, play does not develop" (Vygotsky, 2004). Furthermore, volitional aspects of the child's personality are formed in play (Stepanova, 2023; Moshkina, 2024). Thus, in the process of developing play activity, as with perezhivanie, the child's personality as a whole participates.
How does perezhivanie manifest in a preschooler's play activity?
According to L.S. Vygotsky, a child's role play has three key characteristics: 1) an imaginary situation; 2) the roles assumed by the players; and 3) the rules of the game. These characteristics are closely linked to each other (Vygotsky, 2004).
The imaginary situation becomes possible due to the separation of the visible and semantic fields, i.e., through the ability to act "as if," "pretend" (Vygotsky, 2004). The child gradually masters the ability to create an imaginary situation: in early childhood, play activity is largely prompted by the objects surrounding the child, and the imaginary situation has minimal differences from reality.
In preschool age, "in play action, thought separates from the thing, and action begins from thought, not from the thing" (Vygotsky, 2004). It seems to us that the child's ability to "act from thought" precisely contributes to the emergence of perezhivanie in play. "Thought" here refers to a certain intention that the child wants to realize in play, i.e., to enact, to feel through, to experience perezhivanie. For this, the preschooler chooses toys or makes them independently from available materials. The fact that a child wants to play as a knight or an astronaut essentially means that they want to perezhivanie a complex of feelings associated with that role and plot. Furthermore, within the play situation, the child can repeatedly act out a plot that is interesting to them, experiencing a situation again and again (Vygotsky, 1984). The child's choice of role and plot for play is related to which generalized affective reactions the child wants to perezhivanie at that moment.
In senior preschool age, children reduce play actions and replace them with words and/or gestures; it is believed that children reduce precisely those actions that do not evoke an emotional response in them, while they act out in considerable detail actions that evoke strong perezhivanies (Ryabkova, Sheina, 2023). Thus, a child's existence in play at the intersection of reality and the imaginary world creates the prerequisites for the emergence of an "inner world" in a junior schoolchild, i.e., what is commonly called the loss of childlike spontaneity, when between desire and action, the perezhivanie of what significance this action will have for the child themselves intervenes.
Here, another fact deserves attention. The imaginary situation allows the child to perezhivanie what is happening while simultaneously being inside and outside the play situation. While inside the play situation, the child acts as their role, rules, and the game's plot dictate, and in doing so, they perezhivanie affective emotions and feelings. While outside the play situation, i.e., in the real world, the child controls and corrects what is happening within the play situation. This feature of children's play is designated by the concept of "dual subjectivity" (Kravtsov, Kravtsova, 2019; Kravtsova, Maksimov, 2014). Dual subjectivity, according to E.E. Kravtsova, from the very beginning elevates play to the rank of voluntary activity. In other words, if the subject is truly playing, they control their own game, defining and following the rules, rather than being controlled by the game. According to L.S. Vygotsky, any game with an imaginary situation already contains rules, even if these rules are not explicitly formulated beforehand. Adherence to rules at any stage of game development brings pleasure to the child, i.e., becomes an affect. The rules of the game contribute to the formation and development of the volitional sphere, the ability to control one's activity in general, as well as perezhivanie as one of its forms.
Thus, perezhivanie is one of the elements of a child's play activity; it is woven into the structure of play. However, the play activity of the modern preschooler is undergoing changes, primarily associated with the constant presence of digital technologies in the child's daily life.
Digital play and perezhivanie
DP is generally understood as play activity mediated by technology (Rubtsova, Salomatova, 2022a; Rubtsova, Salomatova, 2022b). DP represents play activity as a system of rules, roles, plots, and play actions localized in virtual space (Veraksa, Veresov, 2022).
Researchers who examine the phenomenon of digital play (DP) from the perspective of the cultural-historical approach speak of the existence of a "virtual play situation," which is not analogous to an imaginary situation. If, in an imaginary situation, a child creates the play plot and substitute objects based on their imagination, then in a virtual play situation, their role is reduced not so much to creation as to choosing various strategies of play behavior from those conceived by the program developers. A similar situation applies to the play role. In traditional play, a child chooses a play role and imbues it with subjective content. In digital play (DP), the child chooses a game character who most often is already endowed with certain abilities, appearance, character, behavior, and has an assigned plot role (Rubtsova, 2019).
The objective difficulty in analyzing DP lies in its diversity, which is partly due to the varying mechanics of the game process. For example, there are DP that involves minimal creative activity from the player (their participation in the game consists only of moving objects to a predetermined place), such as digital versions of board games ("Memory," "Domino," "Dobble," etc.). In contrast, there are DP that allows the player to create a virtual play world. Virtual worlds can be developed either as independent virtual platforms or as an addition to existing toys ("Minecraft," "Barbie," "LEGO," etc.). Such programs allow one to build their own play world in virtual space, create their own characters, construct a unique game plot, and invite other players (Rubtsova, Salomatova, 2022a). DP based on the creation of virtual worlds bear a strong resemblance to narrative or socio-dramatic play and are accessible to older preschoolers.
Another important parameter is the presence of a real/virtual play partner in DP. As is known, traditional role play involves a play partner (child or adult) and arise in the process of social interaction (Vygotsky, 2004; Ryabkova, Sheina, 2023). During DP, play partners can be located nearby and play on the same digital device or on different digital devices; in this case, they actively discuss and comment on what is happening in the virtual world. Play partners can also participate in the same "virtual play situation" but be physically located in different places, in which case communication can only occur through game characters or via video/audio calls. In some DP, the play partner is replaced by a program. Consequently, the play partner in DP can have different embodiments, which affects the possibility and nature of social interaction with them. It appears that DP that allows for the creation of an open game world and the presence of a real play partner more closely resemble traditional games; their "virtual play situation" allows for maximum freedom of action on the part of the player.
Consequently, DP is a phenomenon that combines software products with different mechanics.
Now let's turn to the question of the existence and place of perezhivanie in DP. In our opinion, DP, being a type of play activity, is accompanied by perezhivanie. Let's try to substantiate this statement.
First, DP has become an integral component of the social situation of a preschooler's development, and the widespread use of technology is almost the main characteristic of the modern social environment (Rubtsova, Salomatova, 2022a; Rubtsova, Salomatova, 2022b). Let us recall that perezhivanie is a "prism" through which that very social situation of development is reflected (see above), therefore, in our opinion, DP cannot but evoke perezhivanie in a child.
Second, perezhivanie accompanies DP regardless of its genre. It can be assumed that the mechanics of the play (game genre, presence of a partner, etc.) influence the intensity of perezhivanie (by analogy with a micro-crisis in a traditional game).
Third, DP, like traditional play, engages all personal characteristics of the player. DP requires a certain level of cognitive ability development, and it itself causes a strong emotional reaction in the child (Pavlova, 2024). However, the literature describes difficulties related to the regulatory and volitional sphere: it is not easy for preschoolers to control both the gameplay occurring in virtual space and their screen time (Veraksa et al., 2023). If, in the process of traditional play, a child can "play enough," that is, "to experience" perezhivanie the feeling they had during the play, then the process of controlling DP and its completion often causes difficulties for the child (Salomatova, 2022).
Fourthly, it's worth saying a few words about the role of imagination in DP. It is believed that DP do not contribute to the development of imagination (Smirnova, 2015), but, in our opinion, this issue is not so straightforward. A child's imagination can transform virtual objects within DP; in other words, during DP, a child can see something of their own in the elements of the virtual game space, which leads to changes in how the child perezhivanie the play process. For example, a 7-year-old boy is playing "Tetris"1 on a tablet. From the remarks accompanying his play, it can be understood that the player imagines himself as a crane operator who wants to build a solid wall. The boy's feelings are connected to his role as a crane operator: he is concerned that there are "holes" in the "wall", and he strives to "fill them in". It can be noted that in this case, the perezhivanie is linked to the child's play role and to a virtual play situation that the child created in their imagination, and which is not analogous to the virtual situation created by the game developers.
Thus, perezhivanie accompanies not only traditional child's play but also DP. The question of the specifics of perezhivanie in DP is open and requires special consideration.
It is worth saying a few words about the phenomenon of converged play. Converged play is a special form of play that involves blurring the lines between traditional play activities with toys and new forms of technologically mediated play (Edwards et al., 2020). Modern children around the world are familiar with popular cartoons; they interact with toy characters from these cartoons and repeat storylines. In other words, preschoolers are constantly under the influence of cultural globalization and digital media — cartoons, various digital content, DP, etc. The play itself is characterized by transitions from reality to virtual reality and back (Edwards et al., 2020; Salomatova, 2023). It can be assumed that such mutual transitions between spaces are due not only to the commonality of characters (cartoon characters and their protagonists in the DP space, on the one hand, and figures of popular cartoon heroes and their accessories, on the other), and plots, but also to the commonality of the child's perezhivanie.
Empirical studies of preschoolers' perezhivanie
There are not many works containing empirical studies of perezhivanie in preschoolers. Among researchers, there are doubts about the possibility of conducting objective studies of perezhivanie using statistical methods (Gavrilova, Kornienko, 2025), related, on the one hand, to the problems of distinguishing perezhivanie as a psychological phenomenon and as a theoretical concept; on the other hand, to the objective difficulty of isolating perezhivanie from a child's activity. However, attempts at empirical research into preschoolers' perezhivanie are still being made.
For example, the specifics of a child's perezhivanie of external world events can be diagnosed through drawings and stories based on drawings (Veresov, Fleer, 2016; Gavrilova, Kornienko, 2025). In the work of N. Veresov and M. Fleer (Veresov, Fleer, 2016), an experiment was described in which children were asked to draw their impressions of a church excursion. The children drew completely different pictures, although they all attended the same excursion. In the work of M. Gavrilova and D. Kornienko (Gavrilova, Kornienko, 2025), a case description is presented: a teacher discussed K. Uspenskaya's painting 'Not Taken Fishing' (1955) with siblings (a 5-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy). The next day, the children were asked to draw and tell what they remembered: the girl's and boy's stories and drawings differed significantly. The conclusion of these two studies draws a similar inference about the existence of certain individual characteristics of perezhivanie, through which activity is refracted.
An attempt to analyze perezhivanie in play was undertaken in the work of V.L. Sukhikh et al. (Sukhikh, Veresov, Veraksa, 2022). In this study, the dramatic perezhivanie of a child in play is considered in the context of the development of executive functions. For analyzing child's play, the structured play observation tool 'The Play Matrix' was used, which allows assessing play as a situation perezhivanied by a specific child. The authors note that dramatic perezhivanie during play can manifest in emotional reactions, players' actions, and speech acts (Veraksa, Veresov, Sukhikh, 2022); the corresponding characteristics are provided in 'The Play Matrix'.
Studying perezhivanie in DP and converged play appears to be an even more complex research task and can be considered a relevant area of scientific work.
Conclusion
Perezhivanie is one of the central concepts of cultural-historical theory. There are different approaches to understanding this phenomenon, but in any of them, two components are distinguished in the structure of perezhivanie — environmental and personal. Such a structure of perezhivanie, when applied to childhood, endows perezhivanie with dynamic properties, i.e., the ability to change under the influence of the child's activity, their environment, their stage of age development, etc.
The question of the relationship between perezhivanie and activity in childhood has not been definitively resolved by modern psychological and pedagogical science. It appears that in the process of a child's development, perezhivanie is formed within their activity, and, above all, within play activity as the leading activity for this age. It is important to note that, unlike an adult for whom perezhivanie can act as an independent activity, for a child it is not: perezhivanie becomes an independent activity only in the process of personality development. The perezhivanie a child undergoes during play is not an independent activity of theirs, but rather derivative of the emotions and impressions they perezhivanie during the play process, and relies on the level of development of their cognitive and regulatory-volitional spheres. This is particularly evident in role-playing games, for which it is typical for the child to create an imaginary situation, allowing the child to be simultaneously inside and outside the play situation, i.e., simultaneously experiencing what is happening in the play world and controlling and correcting what occurs within it.
Determining the role and place of perezhivanie in DP is a promising direction for scientific research. A particular difficulty in studying perezhivanie in DP lies in the diversity of DP mechanics.
The foregoing indicates the need for further theoretical and empirical research in the field of a child's perezhivanie in play — both traditional and digital.
1 Tetris is a computer game that is a puzzle built upon the use of geometric shapes of specific forms. Random blocks fall from the top into a rectangular well; while falling, the player can rotate the block and move it horizontally. The block continues to fall until it hits another block or the bottom of the well. If a horizontal row is filled as a result, it disappears, and everything above it, drops one cell. The goal of the game is to fill horizontal rows, without allowing the well itself to fill vertically, for as long as possible, in order to accumulate as many points as possible.