complex self-organizing processes in human activity that differ from innate, unmediated lower mental functions. Examples of higher mental functions are: thinking, speech, voluntary attention, will, imagination, and others. This is one of the basic concepts of the cultural-historical approach developed by L. Vygotsky and his followers: A. Luria, A. Leontiev, P. Galperin, and others. Higher mental functions have the following common features: social by genesis, mediated and systemic by psychological structure, voluntary by the mode of implementation, they contain elementary and higher components.