Depending on the origin (cerebral, constitutional, somatogenic, psychogenic), as well as on the time of exposure of the child’s body to harmful factors, mental retardation gives rise to different types of deviations in the emotional-volitional sphere and cognitive activity. As a result of studying mental processes and educational opportunities for children with mental retardation, a number of specific features were identified in their cognitive, emotional-volitional sphere, behavior and personality in general. The following common features for mental retardation of various etiologies were identified: low performance as a result of increased exhaustion; immaturity of emotions and will; limited supply of general information and ideas; poor vocabulary; lack of formation of intellectual activity skills; incomplete formation of gaming activity. Perception is characterized by slowness. Difficulties in verbal and logical operations are revealed in thinking. The efficiency and quality of mental activity when solving visually effective problems increases significantly. These children suffer from all types of memory and lack the ability to use aids for memorization. More needed a long period for receiving and processing sensory information. In addition, it is noted low level self-control, which is especially evident in educational activities. By the beginning of school, these children, as a rule, have not formed the basic mental operations - analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization. They do not know how to navigate the task and do not plan their activities.
All of the above distinguishes children with mental retardation from their normally developing peers. In a mass general education school, children with mental retardation naturally fall into the category of persistently underachieving students, which further traumatizes their psyche and causes a negative attitude towards learning. This in some cases leads to conflicts between the school and the child’s family.
Only a competent medical and pedagogical commission, consisting of highly qualified specialists in various fields, can differentiate mental retardation from mental retardation. Let us present only the main (sometimes not very pronounced at first glance) features that distinguish ZPR from mental retardation.
Unlike mentally retarded children, children with mental retardation have a higher learning ability, they better use the help of a teacher or elders and are able to transfer the shown method of action to a similar task or choose an adequate stereotype of behavior in a similar situation.
When mastering reading, writing, and counting, they often show errors of the same type as mentally retarded children, but nevertheless they have qualitative differences. Thus, with poor reading technique, children with mental retardation always try to understand what they read, resorting, if necessary, to repeated reading (without the teacher’s instructions). Children with mental retardation cannot understand what they read, so their retelling may be inconsistent and illogical.
In the letter, attention is drawn to unsatisfactory calligraphy skills, negligence, etc., which, according to experts, may be associated with underdevelopment of motor skills and spatial perception. Phonetic and phonetic-phonemic analysis causes difficulties. In mentally retarded children these deficiencies are more severely expressed.
When studying mathematics, there are difficulties in mastering the composition of numbers, counting by passing through ten, in solving problems with indirect formulations of conditions, etc. But help from the teacher here is more effective than when teaching mentally retarded children. Taking this into account, when differentiating mental retardation from mental retardation, it is necessary to conduct an examination of children in the form of a teaching experiment.
Since preschool workers and teachers primary classes Quite often we have to deal with this category of children; let us dwell in more detail on the characteristics of the mastery of basic general education subjects by children with mental retardation and the characteristics of their study in special schools (classes) for this category of children.
An analysis of the oral speech of children with mental retardation showed that it satisfies the needs of everyday communication. There are no gross violations of pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammatical structure. However, the speech of children in general is, as a rule, blurred and not clear enough, which is associated with low mobility of the articulatory apparatus.
Disadvantages of pronunciation, and sometimes perception, in some children are associated with any one pair of sounds, while all others are well pronounced and distinguished. To correct pronunciation defects, speech therapy classes are provided in special schools for children with mental retardation.
The main tasks of the preparatory period are to attract children's attention to the word, to make speech as a whole the subject of their consciousness. During this period, particular importance is attached to the formation and development of phonemic perception, sound analysis and synthesis, intelligibility and expressiveness of speech.
Children with mental retardation entering school have specific characteristics of a psychological and pedagogical nature. They do not show readiness for schooling; they do not have the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to master the program material. Therefore, they are unable to master counting, reading and writing without special help. They experience difficulty in voluntary activities. The difficulties they experience are aggravated by the weakened state of their nervous system. Students with mental retardation quickly get tired, sometimes they simply stop doing the activity they started.
All this suggests that mental retardation manifests itself as a slower pace of maturation of emotional volitional sphere, and in intellectual disability. The latter is manifested in the fact that the child’s intellectual abilities do not correspond to his age.
A significant lag and originality is found in mental activity. All children with mental retardation have memory deficiencies, and this applies to all types of memorization: involuntary and voluntary, short-term and long-term. This extends to memorizing both visual and (especially) verbal material, which cannot but affect academic performance. The lag in mental activity and memory characteristics are most clearly manifested in the process of solving problems associated with such components of mental activity as analysis, synthesis, generalization, and abstraction. This circumstance in a number of cases forces primary school teachers to raise the question of a child’s mental retardation.
However, studies conducted at the Research Institute of Defectology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (V.I. Lubovsky, 1981) showed that when independently analyzing and describing an object that has at least 20 signs, children with mental retardation on average identify 6-7, while theirs is normal developing peers highlight at least 12. But these same children (with mental retardation) when providing the necessary assistance (explaining the principle of completing a task, performing a similar task under the guidance of a teacher), when repeated, already highlight 10-11 signs. Mentally retarded children, before and after assistance, identify 4-5 and 5-6 signs, respectively. The fact that children with mental retardation after help are able to complete the proposed task at a level close to normal allows us to speak about their qualitative difference from mentally retarded children.
The speech of this category of children is also peculiar. Many of them have pronunciation defects, which naturally leads to difficulties in the process of mastering reading and writing. They have poor (especially active) lexicon. The concepts children have in their dictionaries are often incomplete - narrowed, inaccurate, and sometimes simply erroneous. Children with mental retardation have difficulty mastering empirical grammatical generalizations, which is why their speech contains many incorrect grammatical constructions. A number of grammatical categories are not used by them at all. Children with mental retardation have difficulty understanding and using complex logical and grammatical structures and some parts of speech.
The speech of children with mental retardation of senior preschool and primary school age is qualitatively different from the speech of their normally developing peers and mentally retarded children. They experience a period of childhood “word creation” later than normal, and the period of using “neologisms” in speech is prolonged. In mentally retarded children this period is absent altogether.
The behavior of these children is significantly different. After entering school, in the initial period of education, they continue to behave like preschoolers. The leading activity continues to be play. Children do not have a positive attitude towards school and learning. Educational motivation is absent or expressed extremely weakly. A number of researchers believe that the state of their emotional-volitional sphere and behavior corresponds, as it were, to the previous age stage of development.
It is important to note that in the context of a mass school, a child with mental retardation for the first time begins to clearly realize his inadequacy, which is expressed primarily in his poor performance. This, on the one hand, leads to the emergence and development of feelings of inferiority, and on the other, to attempts at personal compensation in some other area, sometimes in various forms of behavioral disorders.
It is obvious that in terms of the characteristics of educational activities, the nature of behavior, and the state of the emotional-volitional sphere, children with mental retardation differ significantly from their normally developing peers. Therefore, as in the case of mentally retarded children, correctional focus is specific for the special education and upbringing of this category of children.
Educational and correctional work with children in this category is very extensive and varied. The most general principles and rules of this work are as follows:
must be implemented individual approach to each child both in general education lessons and during special classes;
it is necessary to prevent the onset of fatigue using a variety of means (alternating mental and practical activities, presenting material in small doses, using interesting and colorful didactic material and visual aids, etc.);
in the learning process, those methods should be used that can maximize the cognitive activity of children, develop their speech and form the necessary skills in educational activities;
in the system of correctional measures it is necessary to provide for preparatory classes (for mastering a particular section of the program) (propaedeutic period) and to ensure that children are enriched with knowledge about the world around them;
During lessons and outside of school hours, it is necessary to pay constant attention to the correction of all types of children’s activities;
When working with children, the teacher must show special pedagogical tact. It is very important to constantly notice and encourage the slightest successes of children, to help each child in a timely and tactful manner, to develop in him faith in his own strengths and capabilities.
Junior school age refers to the period of childhood. The leading activity for children of this age is study. At the time of study, the child masters the knowledge and skills developed by humanity.
Delay mental development(ZPR) is a violation normal speed mental development, in which the child has reached school age, continues to be in the circle of gaming, preschool interests. The concept of “delay” emphasizes the temporary (discrepancy between the level of development and age) and at the same time temporary nature of the lag, which is overcome with age, the more successfully, the earlier adequate conditions for the development and education of children of this category are created.
Also, the concept of “mental retardation” (MDD) is used in relation to children who have mild insufficiency of the central nervous system - organic or functional. This category of children is not characterized by the specificity of hearing, vision, musculoskeletal disorders, severe violations speech, they are not considered mentally retarded. But most of them exhibit immaturity of complex forms of behavior, deficiencies in purposeful activity against the background of increased exhaustion, impaired performance, and encephalopathic disorders. We can designate the above listed reasons as polymorphic clinical symptoms.
Children with such development have a complex structure (speech, thinking, spatial concepts) and form the basis for the work of several functional systems. Such children are characterized by non-simultaneous formation of various aspects of mental activity.
The category of students with mental retardation in the medical, as well as in the psychological and pedagogical literature, has alternative names: “lagging behind in learning”, “children with learning disabilities”, “children at risk”.
In correctional pedagogy, the concept of “mental retardation” refers to psychological and pedagogical issues and reveals developmental delays in a child’s mental activity. Observing the children of this group, one can identify significant heterogeneity in the disturbed and intact parts of mental activity, and a pronounced unevenness in the formation of its different aspects. T.V. Egorova, V.I. Lubovsky, L.I. Pereleni, S.K. Sivolapov, T.A. Fotekova, scientists note that younger schoolchildren with mental retardation have a lag in the formation of perception, a lack of development of visual analytical-synthetic activity. When performing the process of solving problems of finding equal images, minor, barely noticeable details of the drawings are not taken into account, and problems arise in the perception of complex variants of object images for such children. There is also an increased interaction of interfering factors, leading to a low number of visually perceived surrounding objects. Lack of coordination of work individual systems inside the visual analyzer leads to insufficient systematic perception.
Children with mental retardation belong to the largest quantitative category of children in need of special educational needs. Junior schoolchildren in this category can be divided into groups that have:
- reduced performance for receiving and processing information; - low level of development of mental operations;
- low motivation for educational activities;
- weak level of cognitive activity;
- partial knowledge of the surrounding world;
- delayed mental development with preserved analyzers necessary for speech formation.
Children belonging to this category can overcome the problem that has arisen in a school setting (school), but, unfortunately, most of these children need specially created training. This is due to the causes of mental retardation, characteristics of cognitive activity, emotional-volitional sphere and behavior.
The question inevitably arises about the reasons for this violation. Sources of mental retardation are:
- functional disorders of the central nervous system, organic damage suffered in early childhood, long-term chronic somatic diseases;
- signs of organic failure (psychophysical and mental infantilism.)
- stay and presence from the moment of birth in the “orphanage”.
The listed reasons, as well as severe somatic diseases, lead to functional disorders central nervous system.
Children with mental retardation differ from their peers in the field of cognitive activity and require special corrective actions to compensate for impairments. This category of children shows a lag behind their normally developing peers in the development of mental activity, which is expressed in the inability to identify obvious signs of objects and carry out generalization, in a low level of development of abstract thinking, and immaturity of such operations as analysis and synthesis.
The analysis of objects by students with mental retardation is characterized by low subtlety and less completeness. It is these children who highlight almost half as many signs as compared to their normally developing peers. However, it should be borne in mind that these results can be improved by carrying out correctional work. As one example, you can use the task of comparing two drawings that differ from each other in one way (shape, color, etc.)
Children with mental retardation are a special type of mental development of a child, characterized by immaturity of individual mental and psychomotor functions or the psyche as a whole, formed under the influence of hereditary, social-environmental and psychological factors.
Within the framework of the psychological and pedagogical approach, quite a large amount of material has been accumulated indicating the specific characteristics of children with mental retardation, distinguishing them from children with normal mental development.
Peculiarities cognitive sphere children with mental retardation are covered in psychological literature quite widely (V.I. Lubovsky, L.I. Peresleni, I.Yu. Kulagina, T.D. Puskaeva, etc.). V.I. Lubovsky notes the insufficient development of voluntary attention of children with mental retardation, the deficiency of the basic properties of attention: concentration, volume, distribution. The memory of children with mental retardation is characterized by features that are to a certain extent dependent on disturbances of attention and perception. V.G. Lutonyan notes that the productivity of involuntary memorization in children with mental retardation is significantly lower than in their normally developing peers.
A clear lag is noted in the analysis thought processes. The lag is expressed in the lack of formation of all basic mental operations: analysis, generalization, abstraction, transfer (T.P. Artemyeva, T.A. Fotekova, L.V. Kuznetsova, L.I. Peresleni). The studies of many scientists (I.Yu. Kulagin, T.D. Puskaeva, S.G. Shevchenko) note the specificity of the cognitive activity of children with mental retardation; insufficiency of verbal mediation, for example, violation of verbalization, change in communication methods, poverty of social experience (G.V. Gribanova, L.V. Kuznetsova, N.L. Belopolskaya), immaturity of general and fine motor skills.
When studying personal characteristics children with mental retardation problems are revealed in the motivational-volitional sphere. Psychologists note weakness of volitional processes, emotional instability, impulsiveness or lethargy and apathy. Children with mental retardation develop hyperactivity syndromes, as well as increased levels of anxiety and aggression (M.S. Pevzner). The play activity of many children with mental retardation is characterized by the inability to develop joint play in accordance with the game plan (L.V. Kuznetsova, E.S. Slepovich). The plots of the games tend to stereotypes, mainly touch on everyday topics, and they have reduced interest in games and toys. The very desire to play often looks like a way to make it difficult to practice and learn. The desire to play arises precisely in situations of the need for purposeful intellectual activity.
The orientation of spatial representation in students develops as a special sensory-perceptual ability. This ability is based on understanding spatial relationships through mastering methods of perception, reproduction, and transformation. In the early stages, development and formation is associated with the appearance in the child of a sense of his own body: it develops motor activity, visual-motor coordination and practical activities.
This ability forms ideas about the relationship of external objects in relation to one’s own body (about finding objects using the concepts of “top-bottom”, “which side”, about the distance to which an object is located); an idea of the spatial relationship between two or more objects located in the surrounding space.
In junior school age The development of spatial concepts in children with mental retardation is subject to one of the main laws of development. This law can be called the law of the axial axis
This law forms the idea of the vertical, horizontal “from oneself” forward, then - about the right and left sides. The process of forming the concept of “behind” is more difficult for children of primary school age who have disabilities. A holistic picture of the world in the perception of spatial relationships between objects and own body, or rather, the outcome of a child’s development is formed most late.
Mastering a sign (gesture, verbal, graphic) culture, which leads to the formation of generalized ideas suitable for modeling space and its transformation in mental terms, is the next important step. A very difficult level is the assimilation of spatial representations - logical-grammatical structures. These constructions include the comparative categories of our language.
This level is the most complex, late-forming and develops directly as speech activity and as one of the main components of the child’s perception and thinking.
Of particular importance for problem children (in particular, for children with intellectual disabilities, since mental retardation significantly complicates the process of forming these ideas and skills) is the mastery of spatial concepts and spatial orientation skills. Disturbances occur in the formation of spatial concepts in children with mental retardation. Children belonging to this category experience significant difficulties in perceiving the practical transformation of space.
Features of the visual activity of children with mental retardation are determined by the structure of their impairments. Sensory impairments affect the formation of image skills in modeling, drawing, and appliqué.
Highlighting the problem raised in our work, namely the study of the characteristics of spatial representations in students in experimental classes, we can say that developmental disorders do not provide a full-fledged process in the visual activity of children. There is imperfection in color discrimination (recognition of intermediate colors) and such components of perception as differentiation, selectivity, integrity, meaningfulness, accuracy.
The following features can be identified in children with mental retardation:
-attention unstable, uneven performance; it is difficult for the child to gather, concentrate and hold attention during a particular activity; insufficient focus of activity; children are impulsive, often distracted, and have difficulty switching from one task to another.
Many children experience difficulties in perception(visual, auditory, tactile); children do not know how to examine an object and do not show pronounced indicative activity; have difficulty in practical discrimination between properties and objects, but their sensory experience for a long time is not consolidated and generalized verbally; experience particular difficulties in mastering ideas about size; the process of analyzing perception is complicated: they cannot identify the main elements of an object, their spatial relationship, small details, which does not allow the formation of a holistic image of the object and this is reflected in visual activity.
Children have limited volume memory and the strength of memorization is reduced; characterized by inaccurate reproduction and rapid loss of information; randomness of memorization is practically absent;
The lag is noted at the level of visual forms thinking, difficulties arise in the formation of the sphere of images - ideas; it is difficult for children to create a whole from parts and to isolate parts from a whole, difficulties in spatially operating with images; the level of verbal-logical thinking is not formed: they do not identify essential features when generalizing, they generalize according to situational or functional characteristics; difficulties in comparison.
Violations speeches predominantly systemic in nature; children have deficiencies in sound pronunciation and phonemic development; difficulties are noted in understanding instructions, the content of fairy tales, poems; limited vocabulary, word formation; problems in the coherent, grammatical aspect of speech accompanying the activity.
Thus, due to the diversity and multiplicity of violations correctional work with children with mental retardation requires the use of a variety of technologies, methods and techniques.
Also, in the process of drawing, a violation of spatial orientation is affected; this can manifest itself both in the gluing of objects, and in the location and layout of the image performed by the child on a sheet of paper. Difficulties arise with subject and subject drawing, modeling, and appliqué. Lack of self-control does not allow you to clarify and compare your image with a model and give a verbal assessment. Violation in general and fine motor skills make it difficult to use and properly master painting tools (brush, stick, scissors).
Since most mental functions (speech, spatial representations, thinking) have a complex structure and are based on the interaction of several functional systems, the creation of such interactions in children with mental retardation is not only slowed down, but also occurs differently than in normally developing children. peers. Consequently, the corresponding mental functions are formed differently than during normal development.
In younger schoolchildren with mental retardation, the following is observed:
Low degree of development of perception. This manifests itself in the need for a longer period of time to receive and process sensory information; difficulties in recognizing objects in an unusual position, schematic and contour images; limited, fragmented knowledge of these children about the world around them.
In most cases, similar properties of objects are perceived by them as identical. Children in this category do not always recognize and often confuse letters with similar designs and their individual elements, often incorrectly perceive combinations of letters, etc. According to some foreign psychologists, in particular G. Spionek, a lag in the development of visual perception is one of the reasons for those difficulties these children face in the learning process.
At the initial stage of systematic education, junior schoolchildren with mental retardation exhibit inferiority of subtle forms of auditory and visual perception, insufficient planning, and implementation of complex motor programs.
Spatial representations are not sufficiently formed: orientation in the directions of space for a fairly long period of time is carried out at the level of practical actions; Difficulties often arise in the synthesis and spatial analysis of the situation. Since the formation of spatial concepts is closely related to the development of constructive thinking, the formation of concepts of this type in primary schoolchildren with mental retardation also has its own characteristics.
For example, when folding complex geometric shapes and patterns, children with mental retardation are often unable to carry out a full analysis of the form, establish symmetry and identity of parts of the constructed figures, arrange the structure on a plane, and connect it into one whole. But, unlike the mentally retarded, children with mental retardation usually perform simple patterns correctly.
Features of attention: instability, confusion, poor concentration, difficulty switching.
A decrease in the ability to distribute and focus attention is especially evident in conditions when the task is completed in the presence of simultaneously operating speech stimuli, which have great emotional and semantic content for children.
Insufficient organization of attention is associated with poor development of children's intellectual activity, imperfect self-control skills, and insufficient development of a sense of responsibility and interest in learning. Children with mental retardation experience slowness and uneven development of attention stability, as well as a wide range of individual and age-related differences in this quality.
There are shortcomings in the analysis when performing tasks under conditions of increased speed of perception of material, when differentiation of such stimuli becomes difficult. Complicating working conditions leads to a significant slowdown in task completion, but at the same time, activity productivity decreases slightly.
The level of attention distribution in younger schoolchildren with mental retardation increases abruptly in the third grade, in contrast to mentally retarded children, for whom it gradually increases when moving to each subsequent grade. Children in this category develop a fairly uniform shift of attention.
Correlative analysis reveals an insufficient relationship between switchability and other characteristics of attention in younger schoolchildren with mental retardation, which in most cases manifests itself only in the first and third years of schooling.
Most researchers note that deficiencies in voluntary attention (exhaustion, weak ability to maintain its stability) characterize cognitive activity during mental retardation.
Instability of attention and decreased performance in younger schoolchildren with mental retardation have personal forms of manifestation. Thus, for some children, high performance and maximum attentional tension decrease as work is completed; other children have the greatest concentration of attention after partially completing the activity, that is, they need additional time to engage in the activity; The third group of children is characterized by periodic fluctuations in attention and uneven performance throughout the entire period of completing the task.
Deviations in memory development. There is instability and a pronounced decrease in memorization productivity; predominance of visual memory over verbal; inability to organize one’s work, low level of self-control in the process of memorization and reproduction; poor ability to rationally use memorization techniques; small volume and accuracy of memorization; low level of indirect memorization; the predominance of mechanical memorization over verbal-logical; among the violations short term memory- increased inhibition of traces under the influence of noise and internal interference (mutual influence of various mnemonic traces on each other); rapid forgetting of material and low memorization speed.
Children in this category find it difficult to master complex types of memory. Thus, until the fourth grade, the majority of students with mental retardation mechanically memorize the material, while their normally developing peers in this period (first to fourth grade) use voluntary indirect memorization.
The lag in the development of cognitive activity begins with early forms of thinking: visual-effective and visual-figurative. In younger schoolchildren, visual-effective thinking is the least impaired; visual-figurative thinking is insufficient.
Thus, during systematic learning, these children can safely group objects according to such visual features as shape and color, but with great difficulty distinguish the size and material of objects as common features; difficulties are noted in abstracting one feature and meaningfully contrasting it with others, in the transition from one principle of classification to another.
Children in this group have poorly developed analytical-synthetic activity in all types of thinking.
When analyzing a phenomenon or object, children name non-existent or superficial qualities with insufficient accuracy and completeness. Subsequently, primary schoolchildren with mental retardation identify almost two times fewer features in images than their normally developing peers.
The process of generalizing generic concepts mainly depends on the amount of specific material with which the child works. Generic concepts in primary schoolchildren with mental retardation are poorly differentiated and diffuse in nature. These children, as a rule, can reproduce a particular concept only after presenting a large number of corresponding objects or their images, while typically developing children can complete this task after presenting one or two objects.
Children especially experience great difficulties when it is necessary to include the same object in various systems generalizations that reflect the diverse and difficult relationships between the phenomena of the surrounding reality. Even the principle of activity discovered during the solution of a specific task cannot always be transferred to new conditions. One of the reasons for such erroneous decisions may be the incorrect updating of generic concepts.
During the classification operation, the main difficulty for children is that they cannot mentally combine two or more signs of a phenomenon or object. However, this activity can be quite successful if practical activities with objects of classification are possible.
At the beginning of schooling in children with mental retardation, as a rule, the main mental operations are not sufficiently formed at the verbal-logical level. For children in this group, it is difficult to draw a logical conclusion from the two proposed premises. They do not have a hierarchy of concepts. Children perform grouping tasks at the level of figurative thinking, and not concrete conceptual thinking, as it should be at this age.
However, they solve verbally formulated problems that relate to situations based on children’s everyday experience at a higher level than simple tasks that are based on visual material that children have not encountered before. These children are more accessible to analogy problems, in solving which it is possible to rely on a model, on their everyday experience. However, when solving such tasks, children make many mistakes due to insufficiently formed samples and their inadequate reproduction.
A large number of researchers note that in constructing logical judgments by analogy, children with mental retardation are closer to adequately developing children, and in their ability to prove the truth of judgments and draw conclusions from premises, they are closer to mentally retarded children. Younger schoolchildren with mental retardation are characterized by inertia of thinking, which manifests itself in various forms.
For example, when learning, children create inert, slow-moving associations that cannot be changed. When moving from one system of skills and knowledge to another, students can use proven methods without modifying them, which ultimately leads to the difficulty of switching from one method of action to another.
Inertia manifests itself especially clearly when working with problematic tasks, the solution of which requires independent search. Instead of understanding the problem and finding an adequate way to solve it, in most cases, students reproduce the most familiar methods, thus a kind of substitution of the task is carried out and the ability for self-regulation is not developed, and the motivation to avoid failures is not formed.
Another feature of the thinking of children with mental retardation is a decrease in cognitive activity. Some children almost never ask questions about the phenomena of the surrounding reality and objects. These are passive, slow children with slow speech. Other children ask questions, mostly related to external properties surrounding objects. They are usually verbose and somewhat disinhibited.
An insufficient level of cognitive activity during learning is also manifested in the fact that children in this category use the time allocated to complete a task ineffectively and make few assumptions before solving the problem.
In the process of memorization, a decrease in cognitive activity manifests itself in the absence effective use time, which is intended for initial orientation in the task, the need for constant encouragement to memorize, the inability to use techniques and methods that can facilitate memorization, and a reduced level of self-control.
Insufficient cognitive activity is especially obvious in relation to phenomena and objects that are outside the range defined by an adult. This is confirmed by the incompleteness and superficiality of knowledge about objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality, which children acquire mainly from the media, books, and communication with adults.
The activities of younger schoolchildren with mental retardation are characterized by general disorganization, lack of unity of goals, weak speech regulation, and impulsiveness; insufficient activity in all types of activities, especially spontaneous ones.
Having started work, children most often show indecisiveness and ask questions that have already been previously voiced by the teacher or described in the textbook; Sometimes they cannot independently understand the formulation of the problem.
Children experience serious difficulties when performing tasks with several instructions: as a rule, they do not grasp the meaning of the task as a whole, violate the sequence in work, and have difficulty switching from one technique to another. Children do not follow some instructions at all, while the correct execution of others may be hampered by the presence of neighboring instructions. But the same instructions presented separately usually do not cause problems.
The educational activity of schoolchildren with mental retardation is characterized by the fact that the same student, when completing a task, can act both correctly and incorrectly. The combination of correctly completing a task with an incorrect one may indicate that schoolchildren are temporarily losing instructions due to the complication of working conditions.
The insufficiency of the regulatory function of speech is manifested in children's difficulties in verbally denoting the actions being performed and in completing tasks suggested by speech instructions. In children's oral reports about the work done, they, as a rule, do not clearly indicate the sequence of actions performed, and at the same time, they often give a description of insignificant, secondary points.
Children in this group have a violation of the necessary step-by-step control over the activities performed; they often do not notice the discrepancy between their work and the proposed model, and do not find the mistakes they have made, even if the manager asks them to check their work. Schoolchildren are rarely able to adequately evaluate their work and correctly motivate the assessment, which in most cases is overestimated.
When asked to explain why they evaluate their work in this way, children answer thoughtlessly, do not realize and do not establish the connection between the unsuccessful result and the wrongly chosen method of activity, or incorrectly performed actions.
In younger schoolchildren with mental retardation, in most cases there is a weakening of regulation at all levels of activity. Even if the child “accepted” the problem, difficulties may arise in solving it, since its conditions as a whole are not analyzed, probable solutions are not outlined, the results obtained are not controlled, and mistakes made by the child are not corrected.
Children with mental retardation experience difficulties in the need to concentrate to find a solution to a problem, which is also associated with poor development of the emotional-volitional sphere. Because of this, they often experience fluctuations in the level of activity and performance, a change in “non-working” and “working” states.
During a lesson, they can work for no more than 12-15 minutes, and then fatigue sets in, attention and activity decrease significantly, rash, impulsive actions arise, many corrections and errors appear in the work; Outbursts of irritation and even refusal to work in response to the teacher’s instructions are not uncommon.
So, educational and cognitive activity is unattractive for schoolchildren with mental retardation; they quickly become satiated when completing tasks. Motivation and emotions correspond more younger age. Self-esteem is poorly differentiated. However, no significant disturbances in mental processes are observed.
The delay is largely related to the emotional-volitional sphere of the individual, leading to insufficient voluntary regulation of thinking, concentration, and memorization. With assistance and regular encouragement, children with mental retardation demonstrate a sufficient level of achievement in the intellectual sphere.
At the end of the first chapter, graduation qualifying work Let us note that educational activity is a complex education in its structure. It includes:
Educational and cognitive motives;
educational tasks and educational operations that make up their operator content;
- - control;
- - assessment.
Manifestations of mental retardation include delayed emotional-volitional maturation in the form of one or another variant of infantilism, and insufficiency, delayed development of cognitive activity, while the manifestations of this condition can be varied. A child with mental retardation seems to correspond in his mental development to a younger age, but this correspondence is only external.
Meticulous psychic research demonstrates specific features his mental activity, the source of which often lies in the crude organic insufficiency of those brain systems, which are responsible for the child’s learning ability, for the possibility of his adaptation to the conditions of the school. Its deficiency manifests itself, first of all, in the child’s low cognitive ability, which manifests itself, as a rule, in all areas of his mental activity.
It is difficult to call such a child inquisitive; he does not seem to “see” or “hear” much in the world around him, and does not try to understand or comprehend the events and phenomena occurring around him. This is due to the peculiarities of his perception, memory, thinking, attention, and emotional-volitional sphere.
Introduction
Play is the most accessible type of activity for children, a way of processing impressions received from the surrounding world. The game clearly reveals the child’s thinking and imagination, his emotionality, activity, and developing need for communication.
An interesting game increases mental activity child, and he can solve a more difficult problem than in class. But this does not mean that classes should be conducted only in the form of games. Play is only one of the methods, and it gives good results only in combination with others: observations, conversations, reading and others.
For children with mental retardation at primary school age, play is the main method of learning.
While playing, children learn to apply their knowledge and skills in practice and use them in different conditions. Play is an independent activity in which children interact with peers. They are united by a common goal, joint efforts to achieve it, and common experiences. Play experiences leave a deep imprint on the child’s mind and contribute to the formation of good feelings, noble aspirations, and collective life skills.
The game occupies a large place in the system of physical, moral, labor and aesthetic education. The child needs active activity that helps increase his vitality and satisfies his interests and social needs.
The game is of great educational importance; it is closely connected with learning in the classroom and with observations of everyday life. Children learn to solve game problems independently, find The best way implementation of plans, use your knowledge, express them in words. Often a game serves as an occasion for imparting new knowledge and broadening one’s horizons.
All this makes play an important means of creating a child’s orientation, which begins to develop in preschool childhood.
Relevance of the work:
Current stage of development psychological science characterized by increased attention to studying various features and child development options. The contradictory socio-economic realities of modern society give rise to an increase in the number of children with developmental problems. These problems manifest themselves with particular force during schooling, when developmental delays become obvious. Meanwhile, the most important feature of children with borderline forms of neuropsychic disorders and developmental disorders is that most of them need not so much treatment as the creation of special conditions for education and upbringing. In other words, the complex of neuropsychic disorders characteristic of these children requires not so much medical as psychological and pedagogical correction, based on clinical, psychological and pedagogical diagnostics.
Thus, the play activities of children with ZPR Jr. school age is a pressing problem in the learning process.
Target course work: to consider the features of gaming activities of younger schoolchildren with mental retardation.
The object of the study is the play activity of children with mental retardation of primary school age.
The subject of the study is the influence of a defect (DPR) on the gaming activity of primary schoolchildren.
The research hypothesis is that the characteristics of the gaming activity of younger schoolchildren with mental retardation manifest themselves in low gaming activity, a relatively low level of self-confidence and limited gaming roles.
Job objectives:
1) review the literature on the research problem;
2) carry out empirical study features of children's play activities. 3) draw conclusions.
Research methods:
Theoretical – analysis and synthesis of theoretical research on the problems of work.
Experimental – determination of the study sample, methods, diagnostics, statistical processing and interpretation of results.
Organization of the study. The study involved correctional class students aged 7 to 8 years (6 people) with a diagnosis of mental retardation at MDOU No. 14, Klintsy.
1. Features of development of children of primary school age with mental retardation
Mental retardation (MDD) is a borderline form of intellectual disability, personal immaturity, a mild impairment of the cognitive sphere, a syndrome of temporary lag of the psyche as a whole or of its individual functions (motor, sensory, speech, emotional, volitional). Is not clinical form, but a slow pace of development. Mental retardation manifests itself in the discrepancy between a child’s intellectual capabilities and his age. These children are not ready to start school due to their knowledge and skills, personal immaturity, and behavior. Mental retardation can be corrected by teaching and raising a child in a special correctional class. Characteristic features of children with mental retardation: – Decreased performance; – Increased exhaustion; – Unstable attention; – Insufficient voluntary memory; – Lag in the development of thinking; – Defects in sound pronunciation; – Peculiar behavior; – Poor vocabulary of words; – Low self-control skill; – Immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere; – Limited supply of general information and ideas; – Poor reading technique; – Difficulties in counting and solving problems in mathematics. The term “mental retardation” refers to a lag in mental development, which, on the one hand, requires a special corrective approach to teaching a child, on the other hand, it gives (as a rule, with this special approach) the opportunity to educate the child according to the general program for his mastering the state standard school knowledge. Manifestations of mental retardation include delayed emotional-volitional maturation in the form of one or another variant of infantilism, and insufficiency, delayed development of cognitive activity, while the manifestations of this condition can be varied.
A child with mental retardation seems to correspond in his mental development to a younger age, but this correspondence is only external. A thorough mental study shows the specific features of his mental activity, which are most often based on a mild organic insufficiency of those brain systems that are responsible for the child’s learning ability, for the possibility of his adaptation to school conditions.
Its deficiency manifests itself, first of all, in the child’s low cognitive activity, which is usually found in all spheres of his mental activity. Such a child is less inquisitive, but does not seem to “hear” or “see” much in the world around him, does not strive to understand or comprehend the phenomena and events occurring around him. This is due to the peculiarities of his perception, attention, thinking, memory, emotional-volitional sphere. The main reason for the delay is mild organic damage to the brain, congenital or arising in utero, during birth or in early period the life of the child, and in some cases, genetically determined failure of the central nervous system and its main part - the brain; intoxication, infections, metabolic and trophic disorders, injuries, etc., which lead to minor disturbances in the rate of development of brain mechanisms or cause mild cerebral organic damage. Unfavorable social factors, including unfavorable upbringing conditions, lack of information, etc., aggravate developmental delays, but do not represent the only or even the main cause.
Mental retardation is one of the most common forms of mental pathology childhood. More often it is detected with the beginning of the child’s education in preparatory group kindergarten or at school, especially at the age of 7–10 years, since this age period provides great diagnostic capabilities.
2. Psychological foundations of play in children of primary school age with mental retardation
Childhood is inseparable from play. The more childhood there is in a culture, the more important play is to society. Long before the game became a subject of scientific research, it was widely used as one of essential means raising children. The time when education became a special social function goes back centuries, and the use of games as a means of education goes back to the same depths of centuries. In various pedagogical systems, the game was given a different role, but there is not a single system in which a place in the game is not assigned to one degree or another. The game is attributed to a wide variety of functions, both purely educational and educational, so there is a need to more accurately determine the influence of the game on the development of a child with developmental delays and find its place in common system educational work institutions for children.
The concept of “game,” like any complex phenomenon of human existence, cannot be clearly defined or expressed through other concepts. Although there are several related activities to play—for example, “leisure” or “entertainment”—play is unlikely to be defined in terms of their combination, any more than by its obvious opposite, “work.” Arising at the border of early childhood and preschool age, the game develops intensively and reaches its highest level in preschool age. Studying the development of role-playing games is interesting in two ways: firstly, with such research the essence of the game is revealed more deeply; secondly, revealing the relationship between individual structural components of the game in their development can help in pedagogical guidance, in the formation of this most important activity of the child.
As a result of many years of observations, special pedagogical research and the study of management experience, data have been accumulated on the characteristics of the games of children of different age groups. These features, highlighted by teacher-researchers, are complex in nature and can serve as starting points in the study of the development of role-playing games. We will not present in detail the data obtained in pedagogical observations and analyze them. Here are just a few examples of generalization of these data.
Zimfira Valeeva
Psychological characteristics delayed mental development of younger schoolchildren
Primary school teacher Zimfira Yadgarovna Valeeva
IN last years there is wide differentiation educational system, a whole range of different developing technologies. Each developing the system is only effective if it takes into account individual characteristics of each child, therefore the problem of studying and correcting becomes relevant delayed mental development in children. Any transition periods pose specific problems that require special attention from teachers. These include changing learning conditions that require more high requirements to intellectual personal development and to the degree of formation of the cognitive sphere as a whole. The lack of formation of these processes is main reason difficulties encountered by children during the transition from primary schools to secondary.
Impaired mental function– time lag syndrome mental development in general or certain of its functions (motor, sensory, speech, intellectual, emotional-volitional, slow pace of implementation of the body’s properties encoded in the genotype. The reason for the lag is weakly expressed (minimum) organic brain damage, congenital or occurring in utero or in the early period of a child’s life, and in some cases genetically determined failure of the central nervous system and its main part - the brain.
More often impaired mental function detected when the child begins studying in the preparatory group of a kindergarten or in primary school, especially at the age of 7-10 years, since this age period provides great diagnostic opportunities.
Subject " Psychological features of mental retardation in younger schoolchildren", due to the fact that, according to many psychologists we teach this contingent of children and the gap in development is one of the causes of learning difficulties experienced by children with and leads not only to a violation of visual reflection outside world, but also destroys the basis for the formation of all mental processes, which are built on the basis of a visually effective reflection of reality. It has been established that children with mental retardation experience significant difficulties in expressing themselves, have an increased level of anxiety, more often experience apprehensions and fears, emotional distress, react more sharply to messages about failure, work worse in stressful situation, tend to perceive a threat to their self-esteem and functioning in a wide range of situations and react very intensely.
Children with mental retardation are not ready for school training in all respects. Their stock of knowledge about the natural and social environment around them is extremely poor; they cannot talk about the properties and qualities of objects, even those that were often encountered in their experience; mental operations are not sufficiently formed, in particular they do not know how to generalize and abstract features of objects; speech activity is very low, the vocabulary is poor, statements are monosyllabic, and their grammatical design is incomplete; interest in learning activities is not expressed, cognitive orientation is either not detected, or is very weak and unstable, gaming motivation predominates; Badly developed arbitrary regulation of behavior, as a result of which it is difficult for children to obey the teacher’s requirements and fulfill school mode, which interferes with the normal implementation of educational activities. Learning difficulties associated with children's unpreparedness are aggravated by the weakened functional state of their central nervous system, leading to low performance, fatigue and easy distractibility.
It has been established that mental manifestations characteristics characteristic of this age turn out to be defective in children. For example, their gaming activity is not fully developed. Children prefer the simplest games, but older ones prefer preschool age role-playing game, requiring the fulfillment of certain rules, is carried out by them to a limited extent form: They slip into stereotypical actions, often simple manipulations of toys. Children do not actually accept the role assigned to them and, therefore, do not perform the functions assigned to them by the rules of the game. Such children prefer active games typical younger age. Children do not keep their distance from adults, they can behave intrusively, unceremoniously, and during the process of getting to know each other they often examine an adult as if they were an inanimate object. They rarely develop long-term and deep relationships with their peers.
Peculiarities attention are manifested in instability, increased distractibility, unstable concentration on an object. Extraneous stimuli cause a significant slowdown in the activities performed by children and increase the number of errors. These children have a narrowed attention span, failure to perceive the required amount of information in a certain period of time, in connection with which their activity is carried out at a slower pace than normal developing children, the pace and productivity of completing tasks is significantly lower.
Memory is characterized features, which are to a certain extent dependent on disturbances in their attention and perception, increased fatigue and decreased cognitive activity. They have poor memory performance, small memory capacity, inaccuracy and difficulty in recall. IN development The cognitive activity of these children reveals a pronounced lag and originality. They have a lag in development of all forms of thinking; back to the beginning school Their learning skills are not formed; as a rule, the basic mental operations are analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization; cognitive activity is reduced.
Junior school age is a large period of a child’s life. Living conditions at this time are rapidly expanding, the boundaries of the family are expanding to the limits of the street, city, and country. The child discovers the world of human relationships, different types activities and social functions of people. He feels a strong desire to be involved in this adult life, to actively participate in it, which, of course, is not yet available to him.
During periods of normal performance in children with mental retardation a number of positive aspects of their activities are revealed, characterizing the preservation of many personal and intellectual qualities. These "strong" sides are most often manifested when children perform accessible and interesting tasks that do not require prolonged mental stress and take place in a calm, friendly environment. In this state, when working with them individually, children find themselves capable on your own or with little help almost normal developing peers.
While playing with peers junior schoolchildren They learn to subordinate their behavior to certain rules that conflict with their fleeting desires. As L. S. Vygotsky noted, in play a child learns to act in a cognizable, i.e., mental, and not visible, situation, relying on internal tendencies and motives, and not on motives and impulses that come from the thing.
Almost all children with an uncomplicated form of temporary developmental delays can become successful students of the mass schools. The main thing is that you need to notice them in a timely manner in the classroom and find the most effective way individual work with such a child. A correct assessment of the nature of the child’s deviations gives the teacher the opportunity to find the most successful ways of pedagogical influence. At the same time, it is very important that teachers and parents know that difficulties at the initial stage of a child’s education are almost never the result of negligence or laziness, but are objective reasons that can be successfully overcome.
We know that not all children upon admission to school are not ready for educational activities that require voluntary attention, memory and mental processes, then children with are not capable of mental retardation at all to assimilate educational material presented in a dry scientific form, which is often practiced in lessons in school. This happens because, as noted above, children with delay mental development are lagging behind in many mental parameters development 2-4 years from their peers. Based on this, it should be concluded that the leading activity for these children is play. Therefore, all educational activities should be permeated with play. Play should be part of the life activity of such children, since play is a type of activity that the child has already mastered well since childhood. infancy and promotes development independent achievement of truths.
Play activities should be present in children’s educational work, but the form of its implementation will certainly change. The game takes on a didactic orientation. All games that the teacher carefully selects, psychologist or adult, V junior school age should carry some scientific knowledge, expand their horizons, develop speech, help in learning and consolidating new material. In other words, gaming activities should not be aimed at entertainment, and on development cognitive sphere of each child.
Especially in classes, where the teacher works with children with mental retardation, the main requirement will be an individual approach to the child not only in educational activities, but also in the selection of games.
Suitable for classrooms where children with disabilities are taught. mental retardation, take on many logical problems to solve, act out skits (stimulate speech development, teach proper communication, develop memory, independence, creativity, memorize and dramatize many poems, fables; solve crosswords, charades; play dominoes.
It should be noted that gaming activity should be present not only in extracurricular, extracurricular work, but is a mandatory element of each academic subject, and the more difficult the subject is for a child, the more gaming moments there should be.
IN junior school At age, the basis of all cognitive activity is sensory cognition - perception and visual thinking. In their training, it is necessary to use special methods and correctly combine verbal and visual teaching methods. At the first stages of learning, isolated verbal instruction cannot be used, because children do not understand the meaning of many words, especially those, which denote the qualities, properties and relationships of objects. Often they do not understand the construction of the phrase or simply forget the instructions, "lose" her in the process of completing tasks. Therefore, verbal teaching methods must be correctly and thoughtfully combined with visual and practical methods.
