The causes of ZPR are. Mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin

Mental health disorder: diagnosis or life sentence?

Abbreviation ZPR! Some parents are familiar with it. This stands for mental retardation - mental retardation. Unfortunately, we can sadly state that nowadays children with this diagnosis are becoming more common. In this regard, the problem of ZPR is becoming increasingly relevant, as it has a large number of different prerequisites, as well as causes and consequences. Any deviation in mental development is very individual, which requires especially careful attention and study.

The popularity of the diagnosis of mental retardation has increased so much among doctors that it is often easily made based on a minimum of information about the condition of children. In this case, for the parents and the child, the ZPR sounds like a death sentence.

This disease is intermediate in nature between serious pathological deviations in mental development and the norm. This does not include children with speech and hearing impairments, as well as severe disabilities, such as mental retardation and Down syndrome. We are mainly talking about children with learning problems and social adaptation in a team.

This is explained by inhibition of mental development. Moreover, in each individual child, mental retardation manifests itself differently and differs in degree, time and characteristics of manifestation. However, it is possible to note and highlight a number of common characteristics inherent specifically in children with mental retardation.

Insufficient emotional-volitional maturity is the main symptom of mental retardation, which makes it clear that it is difficult for a child to perform actions that require certain volitional efforts on his part. This occurs due to instability of attention, increased distractibility, which does not allow you to concentrate on one thing. If all these signs are accompanied by excessive motor and speech activity, then this may indicate a disorder that has been talked about a lot lately - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The construction of a holistic image in a child with mental retardation is hampered precisely by problems in perception, even if we are talking about familiar objects, but in a different interpretation. Limited knowledge about the world around us also plays a role here. Accordingly, children’s spatial orientation and speed of perception will have low scores.

Children with mental retardation have a general pattern regarding memory: they perceive and remember visual material much easier than verbal (speech) material. Also, observations show that after the use of special technologies that develop memory and attention, the performance of children with mental retardation even increased compared to the results of children without disabilities.

Also, in children, mental retardation is often accompanied by problems related to speech and its development. This depends on the severity of the disease: in mild cases there is a temporary delay in speech development. In more complex forms, there is a violation of the lexical side of speech, as well as the grammatical structure.

Children with this kind of problem are characterized by a lag in the formation and development of thinking. This becomes especially noticeable when the child reaches the school period, during which his lack of mental activity necessary to perform intellectual operations, including: analysis and synthesis, comparisons and generalization, abstract thinking, is revealed.

Children with mental retardation require special treatment. However, all of the above deviations of the child are not an obstacle to his education, as well as the mastery of school curriculum material. In this case, it is necessary to adjust the school course in accordance with the individual developmental characteristics of the child.

ZPR: who are these children?

There is very contradictory information about the membership of children in the group with such a deviation as mental retardation. Conventionally, they can be divided into two.

The first group includes children whose mental retardation is caused by socio-pedagogical factors.. This includes children from disadvantaged families, with unfavorable living conditions, as well as from families in which parents have a very low intellectual level, which results in a lack of communication and broadening the children’s horizons. Otherwise, such children are called pedagogically neglected (unadapted, having learning difficulties). This concept came to us from Western psychology and has become widespread. Hereditary factors also play a role in mental retardation. Due to the antisocial behavior of parents, children with mental retardation are increasingly appearing. Thus, there is a gradual degeneration of the gene pool, which needs health measures.

The second group consists of children whose mental development delay is associated with organic brain damage, which can occur during pregnancy or childbirth (for example, birth trauma).

The right decision would be to take into account all the factors influencing the child’s mental retardation, which makes it possible to provide comprehensive assistance.

Mental retardation can be provoked by: unfavorable pregnancy, pathologies that arise in the newborn during childbirth, and social factors.

1. Unfavorable pregnancy:

Diseases of the mother at various stages of pregnancy (herpes, rubella, mumps, influenza, etc.)

Chronic diseases of the mother ( diabetes, heart disease, thyroid problems, etc.)

Bad habits of the mother leading to intoxication (use of alcohol, drugs, nicotine, etc. during pregnancy)

Toxicosis, and on different stages pregnancy

Toxoplasmosis

Use to treat hormonal or side-effect medications

Incompatibility of the Rh factor of the blood of the fetus and mother

2. Pathologies that occur in newborns during childbirth:

Birth trauma of the newborn (for example, pinched nerves of the cervical vertebrae)

Mechanical injuries that occur during obstetrics (application of forceps, dishonest attitude of medical workers towards the process of labor)

Asphyxia of the newborn (may be a consequence of the umbilical cord entwining the neck)

3. Social factors:

Dysfunctional family

Pedagogical neglect

Limited emotional contact at different stages of development

Low intellectual level of family members surrounding the child

Mental retardation (MDD), types

Mental retardation is divided into four types, each of which is characterized by certain causes and characteristics of impaired cognitive activity.

1. Mental retardation of constitutional origin, presupposes hereditary infantilism (infantilism is a developmental delay). In this case, the emotional-volitional sphere of children resembles the normal development of the emotional state of younger children. Consequently, such children are characterized by a predominance of play activities over educational activities, unstable emotionality, and childish spontaneity. Children with this genesis are often not independent, highly dependent on their parents, and have an extremely difficult time adapting to new conditions (kindergarten, school staff). Outwardly, the child’s behavior is no different from other children, except that the child seems smaller in age than his peers. Even by the time they reach school, such children have not yet reached emotional-volitional maturity. All this together causes difficulties in learning and developing the child’s skills and abilities.

2. ZPR is of somatogenic origin and assumes the presence or consequences of infectious, somatic or chronic diseases both mother and child. Somatogenic infantilism may also appear, which manifests itself in capriciousness, timidity, and a feeling of one’s own inferiority.

This type includes children who are often sick, with a weakened immune system, as a result of various long-term illnesses Mental developmental delay may occur. ZPR can cause diseases such as congenital heart disease, chronic infections, allergies of various etiologies, systematic colds. A weakened body and increased fatigue lead to decreased attention and cognitive activity and, as a consequence, delayed mental development.

3. Mental retardation of psychogenic origin, which is caused by unfavorable conditions for upbringing. This includes children whose mental development is delayed due to socio-pedagogical reasons. These may be educationally neglected children who are not given due attention from their parents. Also, such children are not systematically controlled, that is, such children are neglected. If the family is socially dangerous, then the child simply does not have the opportunity to fully develop and has a very limited understanding of the world around him. Parents from such families often contribute to delayed mental development, having an extremely low intellectual level. The child’s situation is aggravated by frequent situations that traumatize his psyche (aggression and violence), as a result of which he becomes unbalanced or, on the contrary, indecisive, fearful, overly shy, and dependent. Also he may not have elementary ideas about the rules of behavior in society.

In contrast to lack of control over a child, mental retardation can also be caused by overprotection, which is characterized as excessively increased attention of parents to the upbringing of the child. Worried about the safety and health of the baby, parents actually completely deprive him of his independence, making the most convenient decisions for him. All real or imaginary obstacles that arise are eliminated by those around the child, the household, without giving him a choice to make even the simplest decision.

This also leads to limited perception the surrounding world with all its manifestations, therefore, the child can become lack of initiative, selfish, and incapable of long-term volitional efforts. All this can cause problems with the child’s adaptation to the team and difficulties in perceiving the material. Overprotection is typical for families in which a sick child grows up, experiencing pity on the part of his parents, who protect him from various negative situations.

4. ZPR of cerebral-organic origin. This type, compared to other types, is more common and has less chance of a favorable outcome.

The cause of such a serious disorder can be problems during pregnancy or childbirth: birth trauma of the child, toxicosis, asphyxia, various types of infections, prematurity. Children of the cerebral-organic type of mental retardation may be excessively active and noisy, unable to control their behavior. They are characterized by unstable behavior with others, which manifests itself in the desire to participate in all activities without observing basic rules of behavior. This leads to inevitable conflicts with children. However, it should be noted that in such children the feelings of resentment and remorse are short-lived.

In other cases, children with this type of mental retardation, on the contrary, are slow, inactive, have difficulty entering into relationships with other children, are indecisive, and not independent. For them, adaptation in a team is big problem. They avoid participating in common games, miss their parents, any comments, as well as low results in any activity bring them to tears.

One of the reasons for the manifestation of mental retardation is MMD - minimal brain dysfunction, which manifests itself as a whole complex of various developmental disorders of the child. Children with this manifestation have reduced level emotionality, are not interested in self-esteem and evaluation by others, and do not have sufficient imagination.

Risk factors for minimal brain activity:

First birth, especially with complications

Late reproductive age of mother

Body weight indicators of the expectant mother that are outside the normal range

Pathologies of previous births

Chronic diseases of the expectant mother (in particular diabetes), blood incompatibility according to the Rh factor, various infectious diseases during pregnancy, premature birth.

Unwanted pregnancy, stress, excessive systematic fatigue of the expectant mother.

Pathologies of childbirth (use of special instruments, caesarean section)

Diagnosis of mental retardation and its prevention

Usually these ominous three letters appear as a child’s diagnosis in medical card by about 5-6 years, when the time comes to prepare for school and the time comes to acquire special skills and abilities. This is when the first difficulties in learning appear: perceiving and comprehending the material.

Many problems can be avoided if the diagnosis of mental retardation is carried out in a timely manner, which has its own difficulties. It is based on the analysis and comparative characteristics of the age norms of children’s peers. In this case, with the help of a specialist and teacher who uses correctional techniques, this disease can be partially or even completely overcome.

Thus, future young parents can be given the most common recommendations, the universality of which has been tested by experience and time: creating favorable conditions for bearing a child, while avoiding diseases and stress, as well as attentive attention to the development of the child from the first days of birth (especially if there were problems during labor).

In any case, even if there are no prerequisites, the newborn must be shown to a neurologist. This usually happens in one month old. Only a specialist will be able to assess the child’s developmental state by checking whether he has the necessary reflexes for his age. This will make it possible to recognize mental retardation in time and adjust the child’s treatment.

If necessary, the neurologist will prescribe neurosonography (ultrasound), which will help identify abnormalities in brain development.

Now in the media, in various parenting magazines, as well as on the Internet, there is a large amount of information about the age characteristics of children, starting from birth. Indicators of weight and height, skills and abilities corresponding to a given period of time will allow parents to assess the psychological and physical state child and independently identify some deviations from the norm. If anything raises doubts, it is better to immediately contact a specialist.

If the doctor you have chosen and the treatment methods and medications prescribed by him do not inspire confidence, then you should contact another specialist who will help dispel your doubts. In any case, it is important to obtain as much information as possible in order to have a complete picture of the child’s problem. It is necessary to consult with a specialist about the effect of a particular drug, its side effects, effectiveness, duration of use, as well as its analogues. Often, behind “unknown” names are hidden fairly harmless medications that improve brain activity.

For a child to fully develop, he needs more than just a specialist. The baby can receive much more tangible and effective help from his own parents and household members.

At the initial stage, a newborn child learns about the world through tactile sensations, so it is physical and emotional contact that involves the mother’s touch, kisses, and stroking that is important for him. Only the mother's care can enable the child to adequately perceive the unknown world around him, helping him orient himself in space, while feeling calm and protected. It is precisely such easy-to-follow recommendations as full communication with the baby, tactile and emotional contacts that can give the most effective results, having a colossal impact on the child’s development.

Also, the child must have visual contact with the people caring for him. This method of conveying feelings is well known even to newborns who are not yet aware of other means of communication. An affectionate and kind look relieves the baby’s anxiety, having a calming effect on him. The child constantly needs confirmation of his security in this unfamiliar world. Therefore, all the mother’s attention should be directed to communicating with her baby, which will give him confidence. The lack of maternal affection in childhood will certainly affect later in the form of psychological manifestations of various kinds.

Children with mental retardation require increased attention, increased care, affectionate treatment, and mother’s warm hands. Children with mental retardation need all this a thousand times more than their healthy peers.

Often parents, hearing the diagnosis of “mental retardation” (MDD) addressed to their child, become very frightened and upset. In principle, there is indeed a reason for disappointment, but, as people say, “the wolf is not as terrible as they paint it.” Mental retardation is by no means mental retardation. With due attention can be identified already in the early stages of a baby’s life, and therefore make the necessary efforts to help him develop in the right direction.

Just recently, doctors with unjustified ease diagnosed small children with mental retardation, only by observing some norms of mental development that were not age-appropriate. Often they even persuaded parents to wait, reassuring them that the child would “outgrow it.” In fact, such a child really, really needs the help of his parents: only they, first of all, will be able to turn the situation around and correct And . After all, each deviation in mental development is very conditional and individual, and can have many causes and consequences. Neurologists and psychologists will help parents analyze what triggered mental retardation and eliminate it.

So what is mental retardation? This is a mild deviation in mental development, located somewhere in the middle between normality and pathology. As we have already said, there is no reason to equate such deviations with mental retardation - with timely and taking the necessary measures, the ZPR is corrected and eliminated. Delayed mental development is explained by slow maturation and formation of the psyche. It can manifest itself differently in each individual child, differing both in time and in the degree of manifestation.

Modern medicine claims: mental retardation can develop due to either biological or social factors.

Biological include unfavorable course of pregnancy, for example, constant illnesses of pregnant women; addiction to alcohol or drugs during pregnancy; pathological childbirth (caesarean section, forceps delivery); incompatibility of the blood of mother and baby according to the Rh factor. You can also add to this group the presence of mental or mental illness in relatives. neurological diseases infectious diseases suffered by the baby in early childhood.

Social factors that can provoke mental retardation are overprotection or, conversely, refusal ; lack of physical contact with the mother; aggressive attitude of adults towards the baby and in the family in general; psychological trauma as a result of improper upbringing of a child.

But in order to select the most appropriate correction methods for mental retardation, just identifying the cause that caused the disorders is not enough. A clinical and psychological diagnosis is required, which will subsequently determine the ways and methods of correctional work.

Today, experts divide mental retardation into 4 types. Each of them has its own characteristics of emotional immaturity.

The first type is ZPR of constitutional origin. This is the so-called psychological infantilism, in which the emotional-volitional sphere of the child is, as it were, at an earlier stage of development. Such children are often not independent, they are characterized by helplessness, an increased background of emotions, which can suddenly change to the opposite. It is difficult for such children to accept independent decisions, they are indecisive and dependent on their mother. This type of mental retardation is difficult to diagnose; a child with it can behave cheerfully and spontaneously, but when compared with peers, it becomes clear that he behaves younger than his age.

The second type includes children with mental retardation of somatogenic origin. Their mental retardation is caused by regular chronic or infectious diseases. As a result of constant illnesses, against the background of general fatigue, the development of the psyche also suffers and does not develop fully. Also, somatogenic type mental retardation in a child can be caused by parental overprotection. Increased parental attention does not allow the baby to develop independently; excessive care prevents the child from learning about the world around him. And this leads to ignorance, inability, and lack of independence.

The third type of mental retardation is a type of psychogenic (or neurogenic) origin. This type of mental retardation is caused by social factors. If a child is not cared for and no attention is paid to him, there are frequent manifestations of aggression in the family, both towards the baby and other family members, and the child’s psyche immediately reacts to this. The baby becomes indecisive, constrained, and fearful. All these manifestations are phenomena of hypocustody: insufficient attention to the child. As a result, the baby has no idea of ​​morality and morality, does not know how to control his behavior and take responsibility for his actions.

The fourth type - mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin - is more common than others. Unfortunately, the prognosis for its action is the least favorable. This is due to the fact that this type of mental retardation is caused by organic disorders of the nervous system. And they are expressed in brain dysfunction varying degrees. The causes of this type of cerebral retardation can be prematurity, birth trauma, various pregnancy pathologies, and neuroinfections. Such children are characterized by weak expression of emotions and poor imagination.

The most important and effective way to prevent mental retardation will be prevention and timely diagnosis. The diagnosis, unfortunately, is often made only by the age of 5-6 - when the child already needs to go to school: this is where learning problems emerge. Diagnosing mental retardation in early childhood is indeed problematic, and therefore careful monitoring of the child’s development is necessary. In addition to the fact that the newborn should be shown to a neurologist in order to avoid undesirable consequences, it would be a good idea for parents to personally study all the norms of the baby’s behavior that are inherent at each next stage of development. The main thing is to give the child due attention, engage with him, talk and maintain constant contact. One of the most important types of contact will be bodily-emotional and visual. Skin-to-skin contact involves the caresses the baby needs, stroking the head, rocking in the arms. Eye contact is no less important: it reduces the baby’s anxiety, calms him down and gives him a sense of security.

Psychological support for families raising a child with disabilities health: child-parent game "School of Understanding"

An important link in psychological assistance to children with developmental problems is psychological support. Psychological support should be provided in two main directions: support for children with developmental disabilities and support for parents raising children with disabilities.

We consider psychological support for parents as a system of measures aimed at:

reduction of emotional discomfort due to the child’s illness;

strengthening parents' confidence in the child's capabilities;

formation of an adequate attitude towards the child in parents;

establishing adequate parent-child relationships and family education styles.

The process of implementing psychological support for parents is lengthy and requires the mandatory comprehensive participation of all specialists observing the child (speech pathologist, doctor, social worker, etc.), however, the main role in this process belongs to the psychologist, since he develops specific activities aimed at psychological support parents. It is advisable to work with parents raising a child with disabilities in two directions :

1. Informing parents about the psychological characteristics of the child, the psychology of education and the psychology of family relationships.

After the diagnostic measures The psychologist acquaints parents with the results of examinations during individual consultations and conversations. Conducting thematic parent meetings and group consultations help expand parents' knowledge about the psychological characteristics of children with developmental disabilities and typical age-related patterns in personality development. Having summarized the results of diagnostic work, as well as based on parents’ requests, the psychologist forms parent groups. The selection of families is carried out taking into account the similarity of problems and requests. Work with parent groups is carried out in the form of parent seminars, which include lectures and group discussions. Group discussions help increase parents' motivation to work together and become more involved in solving the problems being discussed. This form of work allows parents to realize that they are not alone, that other families are experiencing similar difficulties. In the process of discussions, parents increase confidence in their parenting capabilities, they share experiences, get acquainted with psychological and pedagogical techniques, games, and activities suitable for home use. The information is offered in advisory form. Such a democratic style of communication between a psychologist and parents makes it possible to more effectively build business cooperation in the upbringing and development of a child.

2. Training in effective ways to communicate with a child is carried out through child-parent games, trainings, and joint correctional activities with children.

Stimulation of optimal relationships between children and their parents is achieved successfully in family and child-parent groups consisting of several families. The group form of work promotes constructive rethinking of personal problems, forms how emotional experience problems and conflicts at a higher level, as well as new, more adequate emotional reactions, develops a number of social skills, especially in the field of interpersonal communication.

For these purposes, parent-child games are used, the tasks and content of which are limited to the topic in demand.

Structure group classes consists of four stages: installation, preparatory, proper correction, consolidating.

First installation stage includes the main goal - the formation of a positive attitude of the child and his parents to the lesson.

The main tasks are:

formation of a positive emotional mood for the lesson;

formation of emotional and trusting contact between the psychologist and group members.

The main psychotechnical techniques at this stage: spontaneous games aimed at developing a positive emotional background, games for non-verbal and verbal communications. The entertaining form of classes helps bring the group closer together and creates a positive emotional attitude towards the lesson.

Main goal preparatory stage is the structuring of the group, the formation of activity and independence of its members.

Tasks of this stage:

reducing emotional stress among group members;

activating parents for independent psychological work with baby;

increasing parents' belief in the possibility of achieving positive results.

This is achieved with the help of special role-playing games, dramatization games aimed at relieving emotional stress, and non-verbal interaction techniques. Such games are unique simulation models of problematic situations of interpersonal communication.

Main goal proper correctional stage is the formation of new techniques and ways of interaction between parents and children, correction of inadequate emotional and behavioral reactions.

Specific tasks:

change in parental attitudes and attitudes;

expanding the scope of social interaction between parents and child;

formation in parents of an adequate attitude towards the child and his problems;

learning to independently find the necessary forms of emotional response.

Role-playing games, discussions, psychodramas, analysis of life situations, actions, actions of children and parents, joint activities, and special exercises to develop communication skills are used. During this stage, parents focus on the child’s strengths, help him believe in himself and his abilities, support the child in case of failures, parents learn to analyze mistakes and find alternative ways to respond to problem situations.

Purpose fixing stage is the formation of an adequate attitude to problems, consolidation of acquired knowledge and skills, reflection.

Stage objectives:

formation of a stable attitude of parents towards the child and his problems.

Psychotechnical techniques of the reinforcing stage are role-playing games, sketch-conversations, and joint activities. These games help to overcome inappropriate forms of behavior, repress negative experiences, change the ways of emotional response, and understand the motives for raising children with disabilities.

Child-parent game "School of Understanding"

The game is conducted with the aim of teaching parents effective ways to communicate with a child with developmental disabilities. Child-parent game is the final stage in group work with parents after consultation events, which were informative and educational in nature, on the topic “The role of the family in personality development and the formation of interpersonal relationships in children with mental retardation.”

Description of the group: parents and children of primary school age with mental retardation.

Conditions: Group size from 10 to 12 people. It is necessary to provide all participants with handouts. It is advisable that the lesson be conducted by two trainers. You need free space for outdoor games and exercises, a small ball, and a music center. It is advisable to use a bell to indicate the beginning and end of a task.

Progress of the lesson.

1. Installation stage.

Goal: to develop a positive attitude for parents raising children with mental retardation to work together.

Tasks:

determining the goals of the group’s work and requests for the content of the lesson;

formation of the group as a whole;

creating a positive attitude for parents and children with mental retardation towards the lesson;

formation of emotional and trusting contact between the psychologist and the participants.

1) Exercise "Greetings"

Each group member (in a circle) gets up, says hello, says his name and says some phrase addressed to everyone else: “Good afternoon,” “I wish everyone to learn a lot of new and interesting things,” etc. Instead of a phrase, the participant can use any greeting gesture.

2) Game "Let's say hello"

To the accompaniment of cheerful music, adults and children move chaotically around the room at a pace and direction that is convenient for them. At a certain signal from the leader (for example, the ringing of a bell), everyone stops. The participants who find themselves nearby greet each other, ask questions, say something pleasant, this could be a compliment, a wish, or any phrase said in a friendly tone, for example, “I’m so glad to see you today!” Instead of a phrase, the participant can use any greeting gesture.

2. Preparatory stage.

Goal: structuring the group, developing the activity and independence of parents and children with mental retardation

Tasks:

creating an atmosphere of goodwill and trust;

rallying a group of adults and children, creating interest in joint activities;

reducing emotional and physical stress of group members;

increasing the confidence of parents raising children with mental retardation in the possibility of achieving positive results.

1) Game "Find your petal"

Instructions: “Flowers with seven petals grew in the clearing: red, yellow, orange, blue, indigo, violet, green (the number of flowers must correspond to the number of family teams). A strong wind blew and the petals scattered in different directions. We need to find and collect the petals of the flower -seven-colored."

Each group collects its own flower, so that the flower is made from all seven flowers, one petal at a time. Petals are located on the floor, on tables, under chairs, and in other places in the room. The team that finds the petals the fastest wins.

2) Exercise "Tongue Twisters"

Each team receives a card with a tongue twister and quickly pronounces it in chorus. Tongue twisters should be chosen in accordance with the characteristics speech development children with mental retardation. The exercise is useful because parents help children pronounce phrases that are difficult for them. For example:

All beavers are kind to their own beavers

Little Sanya's sled moves on its own

Not everyone is smart who is richly dressed

The woodpecker was hammering the tree and waking up his grandfather

The crane Zhura lived on the roof of Shura

The road to the city is uphill, from the city - down the mountain

3) Game " New fairy tale"

All participants play. Each player is given pictures face down, with any plot content. The first participant takes a picture and immediately, without preliminary preparation, composes a story, a fairy tale, a detective story (the genre is specified in advance), where the action unfolds with the participation of the main character - the person, object, animal depicted in the picture. Subsequent players in the circle continue to develop the storyline, weaving information related to the images in their pictures into the narrative.

3. The actual correction stage.

Goal: developing new techniques and ways of interaction between parents and children with mental retardation, correction of inappropriate emotional and behavioral reactions.

Tasks:

updating family experiences, changing parental attitudes and attitudes;

expanding the scope of social interaction between parents and children with mental retardation;

developing in parents an adequate attitude towards a child with mental retardation and his problems;

learning to independently find the necessary forms of emotional response, developing verbal forms of expressing emotions, developing a sense of empathy and trust;

formation of positive images of communication in the family, resolution of conflict situations.

1) Fairy tale game "Sparrow Family"

Instructions: “Once upon a time there lived a family of sparrows in the forest: mother, father, son. Mom flew away to catch midges and feed the family. Dad strengthened the house with twigs and insulated it with moss. The son studied at a forest school, and in his free time he helped his father, and always boasted about it . He tried to prove to everyone that he was the most dexterous and strong. And with those who did not agree, he quarreled and even fought. Once mom and dad flew into the nest, and the sparrow son was sitting disheveled, because ... "

Each team receives cards with tasks:

The son got into a fight with a friend;

The child is afraid to answer at the blackboard during lessons;

The son demands to buy him a computer game;

The child does not want to go to school;

The teacher made a remark that he was constantly distracted in class and violated discipline;

My son doesn't want to do his homework.

Participants are invited to discuss the situation, dividing roles among themselves.

2) Exercise "Emotions".

Each team (parents and child) is given small cards with images of blank faces. Life situations are asked (lessons at school, doing homework, going for a walk, communicating with parents). The child needs to draw the state in which he is during these situations. Parents should discuss with their children why they are experiencing these emotions.

3) Game "Chips on the River"

Adults stand in two long rows, one opposite the other. The distance between the rows should be greater than the elongated river. Children are encouraged to become "chips".

Instructions: “These are the banks of the river. Chips will now float down the river. One of those who wish must “swim” along the river. He himself will decide how he will move: fast or slow. The banks help with their hands, gentle touches, and the movement of Sliver, which chooses its own path: it can swim straight, it can spin, it can stop and turn back. When Sliver swims all the way, it becomes the edge of the shore and stands next to the others. At this time, the next Sliver begins its journey..."

4) Conversation on the topic "Family leisure"

Each team is given the task of making a list of five options for how to spend a day off with your child. This task takes into account the opinions and wishes of all participants. Then each team demonstrates the result of their work. Repeated variants of other commands are added to the general list. From this exercise, everyone can discover different ways to spend family time.

4. Fixing stage.

Goal: formation of an adequate attitude to problems, consolidation of acquired knowledge and skills, reflection.

Tasks:

consolidation of acquired emotional response skills;

formation of a stable attitude of parents towards a child with mental retardation and his problems;

updating positive experience of communication with a child;

assess the effectiveness and relevance of the work being carried out.

1) Game "Flower - seven-colored"

Each family team works with its own flower - seven flowers. The participants in the game conceive seven wishes: three wishes are conceived by the child for the parents, three by the adult for the child, one wish will be joint (the wish of the child and the parent). Then the parent and child exchange petals and discuss wish petals. It is necessary to pay attention to those desires, the fulfillment of which coincides with real possibilities.

2) Sketch-conversation “The most fun day (happy, memorable, etc.) with my child.”

All participants stand in a circle (parents and children together), and each parent talks about the most fun, happiest day with their child.

3) End the game.

Participants pass the ball around in a circle and answer the questions:

why this meeting was useful for you (adults), what you liked (adults and children);

what you could apply to your child (adults);

Your wishes.

We recommend that feedback be provided through a survey, in which parents reflect their opinion on how useful the game was for them and how well it met their expectations, as well as their wishes. At the end of the game, the psychologist distributes recommendations prepared in advance regarding the forms and methods of communication with children (“Golden rules of upbringing”, “Advice for parents interested in developing adequate self-esteem for children”, “Tips for developing a sense of confidence in children”, etc.), a list of exercises and games that can be used at home, on a walk, among peers.

The specific effects of working in a parent group are increasing their sensitivity to the child, developing a more adequate understanding of the capabilities and needs of children with mental retardation, eliminating psychological and pedagogical illiteracy, and productive reorganization of the arsenal of means of communication with the child. Non-specific effects: parents receive information about the child’s perception of the family and school situation, the dynamics of his behavior in the group.

As a result of the work carried out with parents, positive dynamics were achieved in the formation of interpersonal relationships between parents and children with mental retardation. The fact that the game had an impact on child-parent relationships is indicated by an increase in the number of visits to a psychologist for consultations by one third of the total number of parents. During consultations between a psychologist and family members, communication became more confidential. The attitude of parents towards the problems of their children has also changed; they show greater readiness to solve the difficulties of their children, more often turn to school specialists, they began to support the interests of their children more, respect their aspirations, and accept them for who they are. The position of parents in relation to pressing problems changed from passive to active, if more often teachers called on parents to pay attention to difficulties, asked them to help additional help son or daughter, now parents themselves take the initiative in solving collective and individual problems. There have also been changes in the attitudes of schoolchildren towards the learning environment, children feel more comfortable at school, the percentage of anxiety has decreased by 17%, the level of emotional and psychological climate has increased by 12%.

Conclusion: psychological support is an important link in the system of psychological assistance to parents of children with disabilities. The main goal of psychological support is to increase the sensitivity of parents to children’s problems, reduce emotional discomfort in parents due to deviations in the child’s development, develop in parents adequate ideas about the potential capabilities of children with disabilities, and optimize their pedagogical potential. A huge role in the effectiveness of psychological support for parents is played by the creation of various forms of group interaction between parents and children.

Bibliography:

Lyutova K.K., Monina G.B. Training for effective interaction with children. – St. Petersburg: Rech, 2005. – 190 p.

Mamaichuk I.I. Psychological help children with developmental problems. – St. Petersburg: Rech, 2001. – 220 p.

Ovcharova R.V. Practical psychology in elementary school. – M.: Sphere shopping center, 2001. – 240 p.

Panfilova M.A. Game therapy of communication: Tests and correctional games. a practical guide for psychologists, teachers and parents. – M.: “Publishing house GNOM and D”, 2001. – 160 p.

Guide for a practical psychologist: Psychological health of children and adolescents in the context of psychological services / Ed. I.V. Dubrovina. – 2nd ed. – M.: Publishing Center “Academy”, 1997. – 176 p.

Semago M.M., Semago N.Ya. Organization and content of the activities of a special education psychologist: Toolkit. – M.: ARKTI, 2005. – 336 p.

Panova Irina Gennadievna, educational psychologist ()

Content

This diagnosis is made to children, usually at school or preschool age, when the child first encounters systematic and purposeful learning. This is a type of delay in psychological development that requires correction. At timely diagnosis And proper treatment, the behavior of parents and children can completely get rid of this disease and overcome developmental problems.

ZPR - what is it?

The abbreviation stands for mental retardation, according to ICD-10 it has the number F80-F89. ZPR in children is a slow process of improvement of mental functions, for example, the emotional-volitional sphere, thinking, memory, perception of information, memory, which leads to a lag according to generally accepted norms in development for a given specific age.

Pathology is usually detected. at primary school or preschool age. The first manifestations of mental retardation appear during testing, which is carried out before entering school. Specific manifestations include a lack of knowledge, limited ideas, difficult intellectual activity, immaturity of thinking, and the predominance of purely childish and playful interests. The causes of pathology in each case are individual.

Symptoms and signs

Children with mental retardation in cognitive sphere experience minor problems, but they are affected by many mental processes, which form the clinical picture. Manifestations of mental retardation in children include the following signs:

1. Experts characterize the level of perception in a child with mental retardation as slow; there is no ability to assemble a holistic image of an object. Hearing is often affected by the disease, so the presentation of material for children with this disease must be accompanied by pictures and visual examples.
2. If the situation requires stability and concentration, then the child will have difficulties, because any external influence distracts him.
3. When diagnosed with mental retardation, hyperactivity is observed against the background of attention deficit disorder. Children remember information selectively, with poor selectivity. The visual-figurative (visual) type of memory works better, the verbal type is not developed enough.
4. There is no imaginative thinking. Children use abstract logical thinking only under the guidance of a teacher.
5. It is difficult for a child to draw any conclusions, compare things, or generalize concepts.
6. The vocabulary is limited, speech is characterized by distortion of sounds, and it is difficult for the patient to construct complete phrases and sentences.
7. In most cases, mental retardation is accompanied by delayed speech development, dysgraphia, dyslalia, and dyslexia.

Before admission to school, specialists must conduct tests to check the child’s level of development. If there is a delay in mental development in children, the teacher will definitely notice it. It is extremely rare that a child with mental retardation does not have any signs of the disease and does not stand out among his peers. Parents should not start treatment on their own; a consultation with a doctor is required. TO obvious signs ZPR in preschool age includes:

• the student cannot at all or has difficulty dressing himself, eating, washing, buttoning his jacket, tying his shoelaces, and performing other daily procedures;
• the student does not want to participate in joint games, treats classmates with danger, clearly shows signs of isolation, does not want to communicate with the team;
• any of his actions are accompanied by aggression and indecision;
• behaves anxiously, is constantly afraid of even the simplest situations.

Differences from mental retardation

Parents do not always understand the difference between these two pathologies, but they exist, and they are very noticeable. If doctors continue to observe all signs of mental retardation in a child after the 4th grade, then a suspicion of mental retardation or constitutional infantilism arises. The main differences between these pathologies are as follows:

1. Mental retardation and intellectual underdevelopment are irreversible. In case of mental retardation, the situation can be corrected if treatment is started in a timely manner, with proper care for the patient.
2. With mental retardation, a student can use the help that a specialist offers him and transfers it to new tasks. This does not happen with mental retardation.
3. Children with mental retardation try to understand what they read; with LD, this desire is absent altogether.

Causes

The classification of mental retardation is carried out according to the factors that provoked the pathology. One of the possible options is local changes in the brain areas that occur even at the stage intrauterine development. The reason for this is the mother’s illness of a somatic, toxic, infectious form. The same changes occur when a child is asphyxiated while passing through the birth canal.

Another important factor is genetics, which, according to the laws of nature, can reward a child with a natural predisposition to slow maturation brain systems. Often the pathology has a neurological basis with signs of vascular dystonia, hydrocephalus, and failure of innervation of the cranial area. Encephalography can clearly trace all disorders of brain activity that provoke delayed development. Characteristic manifestations of mental retardation in children include the activity of delta waves and complete attenuation of alpha rhythms.

Emotional and psychological reasons develop if the student was brought up in unacceptable conditions from an early age. Interpersonal, psycho-speech and other problems arise if:

• there is emotional, maternal deprivation (neglect);
• lack of attention from teachers, which led to neglect;
• the baby did not have the necessary incentives for normal development;
• parental alcoholism, lack of attention from parents at an early age;
• there were no conditions to master simple skills;
• indifferent, indifferent attitude on the part of the teacher, individual characteristics were not taken into account;
• frequent, regular scandals in the family, limited contact with peers, instability;
• meager, poor nutrition, which did not provide the growing body with all the necessary vitamins and minerals.

Types of ZPR

This disease is divided into 4 groups. Each type is provoked by certain factors and has its own characteristics of immaturity emotional nature, disorders of cognitive activity. The following types of pathology are distinguished:

ZPR of constitutional origin

This type of pathology is characterized by a pronounced immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere; it lags several steps behind compared to other children. This is called mental infantilism, it is not a disease, it is considered to be a complex of sharpened character traits, behavioral traits that can significantly affect the daily activities of the child. The child's learning and adaptation ability to new situations suffers more.

With this type of mental retardation, the child is often dependent on his mother, feels helpless without her, and has difficulty adapting to new conditions. A characteristic feature is an elevated background mood, the expression of emotions is violent, but the mood is unstable. Closer to school age, the child still puts games in the foreground, but normally learning motivation should appear.

Without outside help, it is difficult for a child to make decisions, choose something, or make any other volitional effort. Children with mental retardation can behave cheerfully and spontaneously; the developmental delay is not obvious, but in comparison with their peers they always seem younger. Teachers should pay more attention to such students, taking into account their individual characteristics.

Somatogenic origin

Frequently ill and weakened children fall into this group. Chronic infections, long-term illnesses, allergies, and congenital defects provoke mental retardation. This is explained by the fact that under the influence of a long course of the disease, against the background of the weakness of the body, the baby’s mental state suffers. This prevents him from fully developing, which leads to low cognitive activity, dulling of attention, and increased fatigue. These factors lead to a slowdown in the formation of the psyche.

This group also includes schoolchildren from overprotective families. Too much attention to raising a child leads to a lack of development of independence, knowledge of the surrounding world, and the formation of a full-fledged personality when literally one step is not allowed to be taken without control. Overprotection is inherent in families where children are often sick; constant anxiety, pity for the baby, and the desire to make his life as easy as possible ultimately lead to delayed mental development.

ZPR of psychogenic origin

In this case, the main role is given to the social situation during the development of the baby. An unfavorable family environment, mental trauma, and problematic upbringing lead to mental retardation. In the presence of violence, aggression towards the baby or family members, it entails the development of certain traits in the character of your child. This often becomes the cause of lack of independence, indecision, lack of initiative, pathological shyness and timidity.

This type of cause of mental retardation is distinguished by the fact that there is practically no guardianship and insufficient attention to upbringing. A schoolchild grows up in a situation of neglect and pedagogical neglect. This leads to a lack of a formed opinion about the moral and norms of behavior in society, the baby cannot control his own behavior, is unable to be responsible for his actions, and there is a lack of knowledge about the world around him.

ZPR - cerebral-organic origin

The most common type of pathology has an unfavorable prognosis compared to the types described above. The main development of the disease is organic disorders, for example, insufficiency of the nervous system, which develops for the following reasons:

• birth injury;
• pathologies of pregnancy (Rh-conflict, trauma, intoxication, infection, toxicosis);
• prematurity;
• neuroinfections;
• asphyxia.

This type of mental retardation is accompanied by an additional symptom – minimal brain dysfunction (MCD). By this concept we mean a complex of mild developmental deviations that manifest themselves only in certain cases. The signs are very different and can appear in different areas of the baby’s mental activity.

Complications and consequences

ZPR is reflected sequentially on personal development the patient in future life situations. Significant consequences can only be avoided if timely measures are taken to diagnose deviations, correct behavior, and teach the individual to exist in society. Indifference to the delay only leads to aggravation of existing problems, which will manifest themselves as they grow up.

A typical complication is self-isolation, withdrawal from peers, they begin to be treated as outcasts, which adds a sense of inferiority to one’s own personality and reduces self-esteem. The combination of all factors leads to extremely difficult adaptation and the inability to communicate with the opposite sex. The consequence is a decrease in the level of cognition, assimilation new information, distortion of speech and writing, difficulty in searching suitable profession, mastering simple working techniques.

To determine developmental delay, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive examination of the baby, which is carried out by a psychological, medical and pedagogical commission (abbreviated PMPC). The diagnosis of mental retardation is made according to the conclusion of a speech therapist, psychologist, defectologist, child neurologist, pediatrician, or psychiatrist. The specialist collects anamnesis, studies it, and analyzes living conditions. Next, neuropsychological testing is carried out, a study of your child’s medical records, and a diagnostic examination of speech.

A mandatory part of the diagnosis is a conversation with the baby to study intellectual processes, emotional and volitional qualities. This information becomes the basis for determining the baby’s level of development. Members of the PMPC make an opinion on the absence or presence of mental health development, issue recommendations for the further organization of education, training of your child in a school or other special educational institutions. The following instrumental methods can be used:

Correction

Treatment for mental retardation begins immediately after the first symptoms of the disease appear. Early diagnosis is important for an effective correction regimen, which includes A complex approach, the following main treatment methods are used:

1. Reflexology. Electrical impulses are sent to the brain points. The microcurrent technique is effective for developmental delays after cerebral-organic damage.
2. Speech therapy massage, effective methods of memory development, memory training, articulation gymnastics, increasing the level of thinking. All these therapeutic measures carried out by specialists, a defectologist and a speech therapist.
3. Medications prescribed only after examination by a neurologist. Use on your own is strictly contraindicated; it can harm your baby.
4. At social factors consultation with a psychologist is required. Communication with dolphins, animals, and horses helps a lot. Prosperous couples can help the child develop self-confidence (without developing inflated self-esteem); support should help in personality development.

This type is associated with unfavorable upbringing conditions that prevent the correct formation of the child’s personality. Adverse environmental conditions that arise early, have a long-term effect and have a traumatic effect on the child’s psyche can lead to persistent changes in his neuropsychic sphere (vegetative functions and emotional development). As a result, abnormal, pathological personality development is observed.

This type of mental retardation should be distinguished from the phenomena of pedagogical neglect, which do not represent a pathology, but consist in a deficit of knowledge and skills due to a lack of intellectual information.

ZPR of psychogenic origin has 3 options:

A) Abnormal personality development according to the type of mental instability. Most often caused by the phenomena hypoprotection.

The child is neglected, he does not develop a sense of duty and responsibility, forms of behavior associated with the active inhibition of affect.

The development of cognitive activity, intellectual interests and attitudes is not stimulated.

Pathological immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere manifests itself in the form of affective lability, impulsiveness, increased suggestibility and is combined with an insufficient level of knowledge and ideas necessary for schooling.

b) Abnormal personality development according to the type of family idol due to overprotection– the child is not instilled with the traits of independence, initiative, and responsibility.

Characterized by a low capacity for effort, traits of selfishness and egocentrism, dislike of work, and an attitude of constant help and guardianship.

V) Abnormal personality development of the neurotic type. In families where rudeness, cruelty, despoticism, and aggression exist, a personality is formed that is fearful, insufficiently independent, indecisive, with little activity and initiative (this manifests emotional immaturity). Unfavorable upbringing conditions lead to delays in cognitive activity.

4. ZPR of cerebral-organic origin.

Corresponds to the type identified by Vlasova-Pevzner.

More common other types described above, has great persistence and severity of disturbances in the emotional-volitional sphere and cognitive activity.

There is a mild organic failure of the nervous system, often of a residual nature.

There is a delay in physical development and general malnutrition.

Emotional-volitional immaturity is represented by organic infantilism - children lack the liveliness and brightness of emotions typical of a healthy child. Children are poorly interested in evaluation, they have a low level of aspirations. Gaming activity is characterized by a lack of imagination and creativity, a certain monotony, and a predominance of motor disinhibition.

Organic infantilism manifests itself in one of 2 forms:

a) Unstable organic infantilism. Characteristic:

Psychomotor disinhibition,

Euphoric mood tone,

Impulsiveness,

Low ability for volitional effort and systematic activity,

Increased suggestibility

Lack of lasting attachments.

b) Inhibited organic infantilism. Prevails:

Low mood background,

Indecisiveness

Lack of initiative

Fearfulness.

Cognitive disorders are as follows:

Instability of attention

Inertia of mental processes,

Slowness and reduced switchability,

Insufficient development of phonemic hearing,

Visual and tactile perception,

Optical-spatial synthesis,

Motor and sensory aspects of speech,

Insufficient long-term and short-term memory,

Hand-eye coordination

Automation of movements and actions.

Poor orientation in “right-left” is observed,

Phenomena of mirroring in writing,

Difficulties in differentiating similar phonemes.

They have a satisfactory understanding of concrete visual material, but the level of generalization and abstraction processes is low.

There is no interest in purposeful activities; children do not like to work independently, without the teacher’s coercion.

Children with mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin are sent to special schools, in which treatment is combined with pedagogical correction, in contrast to mental disorders of constitutional, somatogenic and psychogenic origin, which can be compensated in a mass school with an individual pedagogical approach.

It occurs in children with chronic somatic diseases of the heart, kidneys, endocrine system, etc. Children are characterized by persistent physical and mental asthenia, which leads to decreased performance and the formation of personality traits such as timidity and fearfulness. Children grow up in conditions of restrictions and prohibitions, their circle of contacts narrows, and their stock of knowledge and ideas about the world around them is not sufficiently replenished. Secondary infantilization often occurs, traits of emotional and personal immaturity are formed, which, along with decreased performance and increased fatigue, does not allow the child to reach the level of age-related development.

3. Zpr of psychogenic origin

With early onset and prolonged exposure to psychotraumatic factors, persistent changes in the child’s neuropsychic sphere can occur, which leads to neurotic and neurosis-like disorders and pathological personality development. In conditions of neglect, personality development in an unstable type can be observed: the child is dominated by impulsive reactions and the inability to inhibit his emotions. In conditions of overprotection, psychogenic mental retardation manifests itself in the formation of egocentric attitudes and inability to exert volition and to work.

In psychotraumatic conditions of upbringing, where cruelty or brutal authoritarianism predominates, neurotic personality development often occurs. In some children, negativism and aggressiveness, hysterical manifestations are observed, in others - timidity, timidity, fears, and mutism.

With this variant of mental retardation, disturbances in the emotional-volitional sphere, decreased performance, and lack of formation of voluntary regulation of behavior also come to the fore.

4. Zpr of cerebral-organic origin

This form of mental retardation is the most persistent and severe. It necessarily implies a violation of intellectual functions, inferiority of the emotional-volitional sphere, and physical immaturity. Often this is a condition bordering on mental retardation, which is determined by organic damage to the central nervous system in the early stages of ontogenesis. Whether we are talking about mental retardation or just a slowdown in the rate of mental maturation will depend primarily on the massiveness of the lesion. Another factor is the timing of the lesion. ZPR is much more often associated with later, exogenous brain damage, affecting a period when the differentiation of the main brain systems is already significantly advanced and there is no danger of their gross underdevelopment. Nevertheless, L. Tarnopol (1971) and others also suggest the possibility of a genetic etiology.

Signs of a slowdown in the rate of maturation are detected very early and affect almost all areas. Thus, according to I.F. Markovskaya (1983), who examined 100 junior grade students in a special school for children with mental retardation,

a slowdown in the rate of physical development was observed in 32% of children,

delay in the development of locomotor functions - in 69%,

delayed speech development - 63%,

long delay in the formation of neatness skills (enuresis) - in 36% of children.

In cases of development of mental retardation due to postnatal harm (infection, intoxication, trauma) suffered in the first 3-4 years of life, one can observe the presence of a temporary regression of acquired skills and their subsequent instability.

In the neurological condition of these children, there are often signs of hydrocephalus, disturbances of cranial innervation, the phenomenon of erased hemisyndrome, and severe vegetative-vascular dystonia. Abroad, the pathogenesis of this form of mental retardation is associated with “minimal brain damage” (A. Strauss and L. Lehtinen, 1947), “minimal brain dysfunction” - MMD (R. Payne, 1968). These terms emphasize the lack of expression, certain functionality and at the same time non-specificity of cerebral disorders.

The attention of such children is unstable, it is difficult to collect and concentrate. There is almost no purposefulness in activity. Children are impulsive and often distracted. It is possible to get stuck, in which it is difficult for a child to switch from one object to another.

Orientation-research activity has a low level of development: the child does not know how to examine an object, does not show pronounced indicative activity, and for a long time resorts to practical methods of orienting himself in the properties of objects (feels, throws, bites, etc.). Unlike mentally retarded children, these children experience fewer difficulties in practically distinguishing the properties of objects, but their direct experience is not consolidated and generalized in words for a long time. Therefore, the child can correctly follow the instruction “Give me a red pencil,” but it is difficult to name the sign independently.

Such children often do not identify and designate individual parameters of size (length, width, height, thickness). The process of analyzing perception is difficult: children cannot identify the main elements of an object, their spatial relationship, and small details. All this indicates a slow pace of formation of a holistic image of an object, and this, in turn, is reflected in visual activity. The process of recognizing objects by touch is difficult.

Memory capacity is limited, memorization strength is reduced. Inaccurate reproduction is combined with rapid loss of information. Speech memory suffers more than others.

The originality of mental activity is already manifested at the level of visual-figurative thinking. It is difficult to form complex systems from image-representations. Children with this ZPR form experience difficulties in creating a whole from parts and separating parts from a whole, in spatial manipulation of images. The ability to be creative is low. The formation of mental operations (analysis, comparison, generalization, synthesis, abstraction) occurs very slowly.

And yet, clinicians (G.E. Sukhareva, 1959; K.S. Lebedinskaya, 1975; I.F. Markovskaya, 1977; V.V. Kovalev, 1979, etc.) emphasize a different hierarchy of the structure of cognitive impairment in children with mental retardation than in mental retardation: the greatest deficiency is not in thinking as such (the ability to abstract and generalize), but in the deficiency of the “prerequisites” of thinking (K. Jaspers, 1963): memory, attention, spatial gnosis, other higher cortical functions, pace, switchability of mental processes etc.

Anatomical and physiological manifestations of mental retardation

The first symptoms of mental retardation may take the form of a somatovegetative reaction to various harmful conditions at the age of 0 to 3 years (V.V. Kovalev, 1979). This level of response is characterized by increased general and autonomic excitability with sleep disturbances, appetite, and gastrointestinal disorders (vomiting, temperature fluctuations, lack of appetite, bloating, sweating, etc. may be present). This level of response is leading at this age due to the already sufficient maturity of the somato-vegetative system.

The age range from 4 to 10 years is characterized by a psychomotor level of response to harm. It includes predominantly hyperdynamic disorders of various origins: psychomotor excitability, tics, stuttering. This level of pathological response is due to the most intense differentiation of the cortical sections of the motor analyzer.

Children with mental retardation often have short stature and weight. Physical features resemble those of younger children. In 40% of cases there are no pathological signs or mild neurological disorders are observed.

Motor skills are sufficient in most cases. Movements are coordinated, dexterous, clear. Children perform movements well in an imaginary play situation. Only the most complex voluntary movements are underdeveloped.

Mild forms of mental retardation (emotional immaturity and/or long-term asthenic conditions) have a primary impairment of cognitive activity associated with a deficiency of certain cortical functions. In general, ZPR is characterized by a violation of the rate of maturation of any one system. A slow rate of maturation of the frontal region and its connections with other parts of the cortex and subcortex is possible. Symptoms indicating immaturity of the frontal cortex (most pronounced at school age): decreased criticality, underestimation of important characteristics of the situation, lack of a clear attitude towards other people’s assessment of oneself (indifference), immaturity of motor skills, etc. As a rule, these symptoms are temporary and reversible character.

A neuropsychological study of children with mental retardation (L.M. Shipitsyna, O.V. Zashirinskaya) showed an increase, compared with children with a normal rate of development, in cases of increased functional activity of the right hemisphere of the brain, revealed in the dominance or leveling of differences between the hemispheres. The results of these studies are presented in the table:

Indicators of functional brain asymmetry, %

(L.M. Shipitsyna, O.V. Zashirinskaya, 1995)

L.M. Shipitsyna believes that these data, combined with signs of a decrease in voluntary visual memorization and the volume of auditory-verbal memory in children with mental retardation, can be interpreted from the perspective of neuropsychology as the presence in half of the children of pronounced changes in the functional activity of the lower parietal associative area of ​​the left hemisphere, responsible for storage, understanding the meaning of verbal signals, as well as dysfunction in 21.1% of children with mental retardation of the limbic-reticular complex, which, as is known from the literature, is responsible for the emotional coloring of memorized information. And the fact that the complication of tasks leads to an increase in the number of errors and completion time, a decrease in the pace of execution, concentration of attention and performance, indicates, according to L.M. Shipitsyna, the insufficient development of the functions of the frontal associative structures of the brain.

L.I. Peresleni points to the underdevelopment of the frontal areas of the cortex as one of the leading pathogenetic factors causing the occurrence of mental retardation. The insufficiency of regulatory influences from the frontal cortex on the reticular structures of various subcortical formations, combined with an imbalance of excitatory-inhibitory relationships, may cause disturbances in the pre-tuning process that characterize children with mental retardation and mental retardation. In the process of ontogenetic development, under the influence of corrective influences, the regulatory role of the frontal areas of the cortex increases. At the behavioral level, this appears as an increase in the accuracy and speed of perceptual operations, accompanied by stabilization of various psychophysiological variables.

Higher nervous activity (HNA) of children with mental retardation is characterized by greater strength of basic nervous processes (excitation, inhibition) than in oligophrenics, greater mobility and a less pronounced tendency of the excitation process to widely irradiate. From these quantitative characteristics it follows that there is a closer interaction between the 1st and 2nd signaling systems and the absence of a gap between them. This means that it is impossible to develop connections without their adequate verbalization, because the verbal system continuously controls the development of these connections.

Features of ATTENTION for children with mental retardation

Attention is unstable, with periodic fluctuations and uneven performance. It is difficult to gather, concentrate children's attention and hold them during one or another activity. There is an obvious lack of focus in activities; children act impulsively and are often distracted. In a comparative study of the stability of attention in normal conditions, with mental retardation and mental retardation (using an adapted version of the Sh.N. Chkhartishvili test), it turned out that in 69% of children with mental retardation of primary school age, the average percentage of distractions is higher than normal. With oligophrenia, even higher distractibility is observed compared to the norm and mental retardation (L.I. Peresleni, 1984). Manifestations of inertia may also be observed. In this case, the child has difficulty switching from one task to another. In older preschool age, the ability to voluntarily regulate behavior is not sufficiently developed, which makes it difficult to complete educational-type tasks (N.Yu. Boryakova, 2000). Have difficulty planning and executing complex motor programs.

Many children are characterized by a limited amount of attention, its fragmentation, when a child in a certain environment perceives only separate parts of the information presented to him. These attentional disturbances can delay the process of concept formation. Disturbances in selective attention are observed.

There is often a lack of concentration, especially on significant features. In this case, individual mental operations may suffer.

Attention disturbances are especially pronounced with motor disinhibition.

Children with mental retardation take into account the probability of the appearance of a differentiation signal, which indicates the participation of higher forms of analysis in the development of neural connections (M.S. Pevzner, 1995).

In 1987, the American Psychiatric Association defined criteria for the early diagnosis of attention disorders and hyperactive behavior in children based on the following main features:

redundant physical activity: the child makes many movements with his legs, arms or spins in place;

cannot sit quietly for a long time according to the instructions of an adult;

easily unbalanced by external stimuli;

impatient and easily excitable in games with peers, especially has difficulty waiting for his turn in a game;

often begins to answer questions without listening to them to the end;

has difficulty obeying instructions in the absence of negativism;

has difficulty maintaining attention when performing game tasks;

"can't" play and speak quietly;

frequently interrupts others or intrudes into other children's play.

According to G.I. Zharenkova, a decrease in the stability of attention in children with mental retardation can be caused by different character: maximum attention tension at the beginning of the task and its subsequent decrease; concentration after a certain period of work; periodic changes in tension and decline in attention throughout the work.

Among the reasons causing attention disorders, behavioral difficulties and manifestations of dyslexia and dysgraphia, a large place is given to both residual manifestations of organic damage to the central nervous system - mild cerebral dysfunction (LMD), and genetic factors (E.M. Mastyukova, 1997)

According to L.I. Peresleni, when teaching children with mental retardation Special attention should be devoted to repeated repetition of what has been covered. This may help to document the insufficiency of trace consolidation processes. At the same time, violations of selective attention in mental retardation require the use of various methods of presenting the same information. Any methodological techniques that attract attention to new information and increase its stability are important. Of great importance is the increase in the total amount of information perceived by the child in ontogenesis, especially during the sensitive period, as this contributes to the development of cortical-subcortical-cortical connections. An increase in the amount of information entering through the visual, auditory and skin analyzers in the early stages of development is the basis for differentiated perception, more subtle and rapid recognition of real events, and more adequate behavior (L.I. Peresleni, 1984)

Manifestations of mental retardation in the cognitive sphere

Features of PERCEPTION

The speed of performing perceptual operations is reduced. It takes a lot of time to receive and process information, especially in difficult conditions: for example, if what the child is told (speech stimulus) has both semantic and emotional significance. L.I. Peresleni studied the influence of irrelevant influences on the perception of sensory information by children with a normal level of development, mental retardation and mental retardation. During the experiment, the reaction time to two signals received in a random sequence to the right and left hands was recorded. In the 1st series, indifferent noise was presented simultaneously with the arrival of signals to the headphones, in the 2nd - music, in the 3rd - a children's fairy tale. In each series, 50 signals were presented. In 8-year-old children with normal development, neither noise nor music caused a significant increase in reaction time. Only listening to a fairy tale changed this time somewhat. The reaction time of children with mental retardation increased under the influence of music; listening to a fairy tale gave an even greater increase. The maximum increase in reaction time was observed in children with mental retardation. These data are shown in the following table.

The influence of acoustic irrelevant influences on the reaction time of 8-year-old children, ms (L.I. Peresleni, 1984)

	Number of subjects	Number of measurements	Reaction time (average) under conditions:
				listening to music	listening to fairy tales
Norm
Mentally retarded

All children, without exception, were familiar with the fairy tale. At the same time, children with a normal level of development showed a keen interest in it and expressed a desire to listen to it to the end after the end of the experiment. Children with mental retardation were more passive and showed no interest. Children with mental retardation also had no interest in listening to fairy tales; moreover, one subject even asked to turn off the tape recorder. The distribution of erroneous reactions and missed signals is also indicative:

	Number of erroneous reactions and missed signals under the following conditions:
		listening to music	listening to fairy tales
Norm
Mentally retarded

L.I. Peresleni notes that two mentally retarded students by the end of the experiment stopped responding to sensory signals altogether. Thus, against the background of emotionally charged speech influences, reaction time in children with mental retardation slows down, the accuracy of completing tasks according to instructions decreases, and the number of erroneous reactions increases. The data obtained also indicate a tendency for the speed and selectivity of perception to decrease during activity.

An important factor influencing the success of “reading” the signal is the presence of anticipation, which provides the so-called “pre-tuning”. Normally developing children are characterized by a high level of development of the process of probabilistic forecasting. “Waiting” for a more frequent signal leads to a decrease in reaction time to it. In almost 100% of children, the normal reaction of “stalking” was formed by the middle of the first series of the experiment. For children with mental retardation, this tendency may also be characteristic, but the differences between the reaction time to frequent and rare signals are not so significant. And yet, in 70% of cases, children with mental retardation were able to correctly assess the experimental situation and form a “watching” reaction. In children with mental retardation, there are almost no differences in reaction time to frequent and rare signals. And the “watching” reaction was observed only in 37% of children. L.I.Peresleni makes the following conclusion: children with mental retardation and disability expect the appearance of another signal less, the more identical stimuli are presented in a row. L.I. Peresleni considers the level of stability of the recorded indicators to be an important characteristic of perception: it was found that both oligophrenic children and children with mental retardation are characterized by high variability in reaction time to signals repeatedly presented in experiment. However, if in children with mental retardation this variability significantly decreases with age, approaching normal values ​​at high school age, then in children with mental retardation the variability of reaction time remains high even at high school age. According to L.I. Peresleni, the data obtained confirm that one of the reasons for the slowdown in perception in developmental anomalies is a violation of selective attention (L.I. Peresleni, 1984)

The orienting and research activity of children with mental retardation generally has a lower level of development compared to the norm: children do not know how to examine an object, do not show pronounced indicative activity, and for a long time resort to practical methods of orienting themselves in the properties of objects. Unlike children with disabilities, preschoolers with mental retardation do not experience difficulties in practically distinguishing the properties of objects, but their sensory experience is not consolidated and generalized in words for a long time. Therefore, the child can correctly follow instructions containing a verbal designation of the sign (“give me a red pencil”), but it is difficult to independently name the color of the shown pencil.

M.S. Pevzner studied visual perception in children with developmental disorders. Of the 140 examined, only 30 children showed deviations in the form of some fragmentation and slight difficulties in perceiving crossed out and drawn figures. The same was noted with regard to spatial syntheses. Only 20 children out of 140 showed difficulties in performing certain spatial synthesis tasks.

Children experience particular difficulties in mastering the concept of size; they do not identify and designate individual parameters of size (length, width, height, thickness). The process of analyzing perception is difficult: children do not know how to identify the main structural elements of an object, their spatial relationship, and small details. Similar properties of objects are often perceived as the same. Due to the insufficiency of integral brain activity, children find it difficult to recognize unusually presented objects and images; it is difficult for them to connect individual details of a drawing into a single semantic image. We can talk about the slow pace of formation of a holistic image of an object, which is reflected in the problems associated with artistic activity.

Orientation in the directions of space is carried out at the level of practical actions. Spatial analysis and synthesis of the situation is difficult. Perception of inverted images is difficult.

From the outside auditory perception no serious disorders. Children may experience some difficulty in navigating non-speech sounds, but phonemic processes are mainly affected. Such children often experience inferiority in subtle forms of visual and auditory perception.

The indicated disadvantages of orientation-research activities also apply to tactile-motor perception, which enriches the child’s sensory experience and allows him to obtain information about such properties of objects as temperature, texture of the material, some surface properties, shape, size. The process of recognizing objects by touch is difficult.

The process of formation of inter-analyzer connections, which underlie complex activities, has slowed down. Deficiencies in visual-motor and auditory-visual-motor coordination are noted. In the future, these shortcomings prevent the mastery of reading and writing. The insufficiency of intersensory interaction is manifested in an undeveloped sense of rhythm and difficulties in the formation of spatial orientations. The child has difficulty reproducing rhythm, perceived auditorily, graphically or motorically.

These specific disturbances of perception in children with mental retardation determine the limited and fragmented nature of their ideas about the world around them. In addition, one of the main features of such children is the insufficiency of the formation of connections between individual perceptual and motor functions.

MEMORY Features

The memory of children with mental retardation is also distinguished by its qualitative originality, and the severity of the defect depends on the genesis of the mental retardation. First of all, children have limited memory capacity and reduced memorization strength. Characterized by inaccurate reproduction and rapid loss of information. Verbal memory suffers the most. With the right approach to learning, children are capable of mastering some mnemonic techniques and mastering logical methods of memorization (N.Yu. Boryakova, 2000).

L.M. Shipitsyna and O.V. Zashirina, as a result of a comprehensive psychological, pedagogical and neuropsychological examination of children with mental retardation, discovered the following trends: a decrease in the number of memorized objects presented during both voluntary and involuntary memorization; voluntary visual memory is reduced to a greater extent than involuntary visual memory; the volume of auditory-verbal memory is reduced; In children with mental retardation, “learning curves” correspond to the norm 3 times less often than in healthy children. The learning curve indicates the dependence of memorization efficiency on the number of repetitions. Normally, there is a direct relationship - the more repetitions, the better the result. A rigid type of curve indicates very slow memorization, requiring significantly more repetitions to achieve the same result. The depletion curve indicates an inverse relationship - the more repetitions, the worse the result. The “Plateau” type curve is usually characteristic of mentally retarded children and indicates that the success of memorization does not depend on the number of repetitions; it looks like an almost flat straight line, parallel to the horizontal axis. L.M. Shipitsyna notes that more than half of children with mental retardation have learning curves corresponding to the rigid type, and one fifth of children correspond to the depleting type. These data are presented in the following tables:

Average values ​​of visual memory capacity for different types of memorization (1995)

Types of “learning curves” in different groups of children, % (1995)

Types of learning curves	Healthy children	Children at risk	Children with mental retardation	Mentally retarded children
Norm
Rigid
Dwindling

Researchers of the features of mnemonic activity of children with mental retardation note:

increased inhibition of mnemonic traces under the influence of interference, their mutual influence on each other,

reduced memory capacity,

low memorization speed,

low productivity of the first attempts at rote memorization, despite the fact that the time for complete memorization is close to normal,

involuntary memorization is less productive than normal, but more productive than voluntary,

productivity and stability of voluntary memorization are reduced, especially under conditions of significant load,

insufficient ability to apply special moves memorization. The main difficulties are encountered at the stage of using logical operations (semantic correlation, classification) as methods of mnemonic activity,

Children with mental retardation up to grade 4 (9-10 years old) predominantly use rote learning, while normally at 8-9 years old there is an intensive transition to voluntary mediated memorization.

Diagnostically mediated memorization (the experimenter names the words; the child selects a picture for each word; then, looking at the pictures, the child must reproduce the words). Children with mental retardation select the same pictures as their normal peers. However, the reproduction of words based on pictures is much worse. This indicates that the main difficulties lie in the productive use of intellectual techniques. The results of research (V.L. Podobed, N.G. Lutonyan, T.V. Egorova) show that mastery of classification operations and the establishment of semantic connections does not yet guarantee their successful use by these children as memorization techniques. For comparison, children in the same experiment cannot logically select a picture and reproduce a word from it.

Features of THINKING and SPEECH

A lag in the development of mental activity is noted already at the level of visual forms of thinking, when difficulties arise in the formation of the sphere of images and representations, that is, if the visual-effective thinking of a child with mental retardation is close to the norm, the visual-figurative thinking no longer corresponds to it. Researchers emphasize the difficulty of creating a whole from parts and separating parts from the whole, difficulties in spatially operating with images, because image-representations are not mobile enough. For example, when folding complex geometric shapes and patterns, these children cannot carry out a full analysis of the form, establish symmetry, identity of parts, arrange the structure on a plane, or connect it into a single whole. However, relatively simple patterns are performed correctly (unlike MR), since establishing similarity and identity between simple forms does not seem difficult for children with mental retardation. The success of solving such problems depends not only on the number of elements in the sample, but also on their relative position. Some difficulties are caused by tasks that lack a visual example. Obviously, not only reliance on representation, but also the mental reconstruction of the image of a given object itself constitutes a difficulty for these children. This is also evidenced by the research of T.V. Egorova, who showed that the success of completing tasks based on a model depends on whether the sample matches the folded image in size and whether the parts from which it is composed are indicated on it. In 25% of these children, the process of solving visual and practical problems proceeds as an unsystematic and disorderly manipulation of individual elements of a folded object.

They have difficulty understanding logical-grammatical structures that express spatial relationships, and it is difficult for them to give a verbal account when performing tasks to understand these relationships.

Thus, we can state the insufficient development of analytical-synthetic activity in all types of thinking: it is difficult for children to isolate the component parts of a multi-element figure, to establish the features of their location, they do not take into account subtle details, synthesis is difficult, i.e. mental association of certain properties of an object. The analysis is characterized by unplannedness, lack of subtlety, and one-sidedness. The lack of formation of anticipatory analysis determines the inability to foresee the results of one’s actions. In this regard, tasks on establishing cause-and-effect relationships and constructing a program of events cause particular difficulties.

The nature of mental activity is reproductive, the ability to creatively create new images is reduced. The process of formation of mental operations is slowed down. By older preschool age, children with mental retardation do not develop a level of verbal and logical thinking that corresponds to their age: they do not identify significant features when generalizing, they generalize either according to situational or functional characteristics. The generalizations themselves are vague and poorly differentiated. For example, answering the question “What can you call in one word: a sofa, a wardrobe, a bed, a chair?”, a child may answer: “We have this at home”, “This is all in the room”, “This is all what a person needs". They can correctly group objects by gender, but cannot designate the group with a word or explain the principle of classification. In general, classification tasks are performed at the level of verbal visual-figurative thinking, and not concrete conceptual thinking (as it should be in older preschool age) The following fact is indicative: When performing tasks “The Fourth is Extra”, expanding the volume of specific material always leads to the reproduction of a larger number of general concepts. Thus, the introduction of additional items (not “The Fourth is Extra”, but “The Sixth is Extra”) helps them to correctly identify the subject and explain the principle by which such selection occurs.

The most accessible tasks are analogies, in which children can rely on a model or their own everyday experience. Even complex verbally formulated problems from everyday experience are solved better than simple but unfamiliar tasks, although the stock of specific knowledge is poorer than normal. At the same time, it is not generalized, but scattered knowledge that predominates, mainly related to a specific situation.

They find it difficult to compare objects, making comparisons based on random characteristics, and at the same time they find it difficult to identify signs of difference. For example, answering the question: “How are people and animals different?”, the child says: “People have slippers, but animals don’t.”

However, unlike mentally retarded children, preschoolers with mental retardation, after receiving help, perform the proposed tasks at a higher level, close to the norm. They master the principle of solving a problem and transfer it to similar problems.

By the age of 7, children with mental retardation can:

classify objects according to visual characteristics (color, shape);

have difficulty identifying material and size as common features;

find it difficult to abstract one feature and consciously contrast it with others;

it is difficult for them to switch from one classification principle to another;

they have little access to the implementation of a logical conclusion from the two proposed premises;

experience difficulties in cases where it is necessary to use intellectual techniques productively.

An effective diagnostic method is the “Sequential Pictures” technique. The task should be based on visual material, require analysis of the main elements, establishment of relationships and cause-and-effect relationships.

Variants of thinking disorders:

At a relatively high level of development of visual and practical thinking, verbal and logical thinking lags behind.

Both types of thinking are underdeveloped.

Verbal-logical is approaching the norm, but the level of development of visual-practical is extremely low (rare).

The immaturity of the functional state of the central nervous system (weakness of the processes of excitation and inhibition, difficulties in the formation of complex conditioned connections, lag in the formation of systems of interanalyzer connections) determines the specificity of the disorders speeches children with mental retardation, which are predominantly systemic in nature and are part of the structure of the defect.

Highlight general speech underdevelopment, which in domestic speech therapy means special shape abnormal speech development; with it, the formation of all components of the speech system is disrupted: phonetic and lexico-grammatical - in the absence of mental retardation and hearing defects. With general underdevelopment of speech, intonation and gestures play a large role in the child’s communication with others.

In addition to general speech underdevelopment, there are delay speech, which usually does not involve pronounced morphological changes in the central nervous system. The disorders are often reversible and neurodynamic in nature. This can be the result of various pathological conditions in children who have suffered mild birth trauma or exhaustion as a result of somatic diseases in the first months and years of life, as well as unfavorable environmental and upbringing conditions (deaf-mute parents, speech impairments of those close to them, bilingualism, etc.) .

The entire course of speech development (both spontaneous and corrected by speech therapy measures) in children with speech delay is qualitatively different from the speech of children with general underdevelopment. This is especially true for the formation of the lexico-grammatical system of a language.

The development of speech during a delay differs from normal only in its pace; the transition from one stage of speech development to another often occurs, as with normal speech development, in leaps and bounds. Therefore, every year such a child catches up more and more with his healthy peers and, with an early start of speech therapy classes, by the beginning of school age he can completely overcome his speech impairment.

Many children with mental retardation have deficiencies in sound pronunciation and phonemic development. There are many children with dysarthria. In articulatory motor skills there is a lack of fine and differentiated movements. Some children find it difficult to perceive similar-sounding phonemes by ear, as a result of which they do not sufficiently understand spoken speech. At the same time, they learn the correct articulation of sounds better and faster than oligophrenics. Special studies of the sound speech of children with mental retardation have shown that the most accessible for them is to isolate the stressed vowel sound at the beginning of the word and the final consonant. The most common mistake is highlighting a syllable instead of a sound when isolating the initial consonant (for example, in the word a child emphasizes [m] instead of a sound). In normally developing children, similar errors are also observed at a certain stage of their development. However, in children with mental retardation they are persistent, and special corrective work is required to overcome them. A study by E.V. Maltseva also showed that a child more easily identifies a separate vowel sound in words where it forms a separate syllable. The consonant sound at the beginning of a word is most easily identified in words where it occupies a separate position, for example in the word. It was found that children with mental retardation, even if they know how to isolate a sound from a word, do not use them independently.

At the level of impressive speech, difficulties are noted in understanding complex, multi-step instructions, logical and grammatical constructions such as “Kolya is older than Misha”, “The birch tree grows at the edge of the field”, children poorly understand the content of the story with hidden meaning, the process of decoding texts is difficult, i.e. the process of perceiving and comprehending the content of stories, fairy tales, and texts for retelling is difficult.

Children with mental retardation have a limited vocabulary; passive vocabulary sharply predominates over active vocabulary (in normally developing children this discrepancy is much smaller). The stock of words that denote and specify generalized concepts is limited, revealing them in their entirety and diversity. Adjectives and adverbs are rarely found in their speech, and the use of verbs is narrowed. Word formation processes are hampered; the period of children's word creation begins later than normal and continues until the age of 7-8 years. Towards the end of preschool age, when neologisms are observed quite rarely in normally developing children, an “explosion” of word creation occurs in children with mental retardation. At the same time, the use of neologisms differs in a number of features: in speech there are several variants of the same word, the word-neologism is defined as correct, etc. (for comparison, in mentally retarded children throughout preschool age there is no period of children's word creation; individual neologisms occur only at the end of primary school age). The peculiarities of word formation in children with mental retardation are due to the later than normal formation of generalized word classes and pronounced difficulties in their differentiation. In mentally retarded children, the main difficulties arise in the formation of generalized verbal classes (this fact is important in terms of differential diagnosis of mental retardation and mental retardation). The concepts of children with mental retardation, which are formed spontaneously, are poor in content and are often inadequately comprehended. There is no hierarchy of concepts. There may be secondary difficulties in the formation of generalized thinking.

E.S. Slepovich studied the processes of vocabulary formation and word-formation processes in children with mental retardation. In particular, she studied the peculiarities of such children’s acquisition of adjectives. Conscious operation of this part of speech requires relatively high level analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization. The results can be presented in table form:

The use of adjectives by preschoolers

			mental retardation
Description based on perception Frequently identified: Rarely identified: Didn't stand out:	color, shades, size, shape, material	color, size, shape evaluative adjectives material
Description of images: Frequently identified:	color, shades, size and shape (10 types)	color, shades (6 types), size and shape (5 types), ratings (8 types).
Description by presentation:	adjectives per description

E.S. Slepovich notes that the feeling of objects by normally developing children contributed to the increase in the adjectives they used when describing objects based on perception. Children with mental retardation did not try to pick up an object, touch it, or carefully examine it. His study ended very quickly. As a result, no new adjectives appeared in their utterances. After attending additional classes, the number of adjectives denoting the material increased from 2 to 4 types, and value judgments - from 5 to 8 types of adjectives. Children of all groups, when describing by idea, named fewer adjectives denoting the shape of an object. This feature is much more pronounced in children with mental retardation than in normally developing children. They used such adjectives extremely rarely. Children with mental retardation, even having some generalized image of a group of objects, could not correctly describe their ideas. They did not resort to listing several characteristics of objects at once (as children normally do), and if they listed qualities, then all the characteristics seemed to be attributed to one object: “a large, small pen,” “a dress is red, blue, white, yellow.” (in children the norm is: “the hand is white, but sometimes it’s multi-colored”).

N.P. Sakulina distinguishes two groups of children based on the characteristics of the description of objects:

the first is characterized by accuracy of definitions;

children of the second group describe not only what they see in this moment, but also imagine what they saw earlier, drawing on their sensory experience and using many comparisons.

Among children with mental retardation, such groups are not distinguished. Children hardly use their sensory experience to describe what they perceive. If they use it, it is without connection with what is perceived at the moment. Only after correctional lessons do they begin to use comparative phrases. Although very specific, their descriptions are imprecise. It seems, for example, that the child is not describing a specific table, but several previously seen tables at the same time; the description is given without reference to a specific subject. The object (image) seems to only stimulate the child’s verbal utterance. The opposite phenomenon is observed in descriptions by representation. Children do not describe a generalized image of an object, but its specific version. An analysis of the dictionary of adjectives showed that all older preschoolers are characterized by the frequent use of a limited group of definitions ("big", "beautiful", "white", "long", "round", etc.). Children with mental retardation have fewer words in this group than typically developing children.

E.S. Slepovich describes typical mistakes of children with mental retardation in the use of adjectives:

Undifferentiated determination of the qualities of objects. Having identified the quality of an object, they have difficulty identifying it with the appropriate word. For example, a gray hat is called “black”, a large one is called “very long to fit on your head”, an oval pear is called “round”, a thick rope is called “wide”. It is possible that the undifferentiated use of adjectives to denote different, sometimes little similar qualities, is due to the fact that in the child’s perception these qualities are not sufficiently differentiated.

The absence of pronounced and weakly expressed qualities in the description of subordination. Thus, gray trousers with a brown belt and a white buckle are described as follows: “brown, black, white trousers.”

The use of adjectives is irrespective of the qualities that they denote (“a square elephant”, “a good rope”). These errors are mainly characteristic of the speech of mentally retarded people. They are rare in children with mental retardation. Normally developing children do not have such errors.

Errors of a perseverative nature (repetition of the named adjective to describe other objects that do not have the named quality). For example, “the table is round, the pen is round, the dress is round.” Such errors are more typical for mentally retarded people. Normally they are not observed at all.

Based on the results of the study, E.S. Slepovich draws the following conclusions:

There is a significant discrepancy between the size of the active and passive vocabulary, especially for words denoting qualities and relationships. A small number of words are used unreasonably often, while the rest have a low frequency of use. Most words that help differentiate the properties of the surrounding world are absent in speech;

undifferentiated use of words; not only similar, but also concepts belonging to different semantic groups are denoted using one word;

there are not enough words denoting general concepts, and at the same time there are not enough words that specify these concepts and reveal their essence;

vocabulary activation is difficult;

the dependence of the insufficiency of the vocabulary on the characteristics of cognitive activity: inaccuracy of perception, inferiority of analysis, etc.;

Children with mental retardation are characterized by significant difficulties in voluntary manipulation of words (even with relatively simple meanings);

Nouns with abstract meanings and relative adjectives present particular difficulty for them. It manifests itself in rethinking or transforming these words into more specific ones, inventing meaningless phrases with them;

When constructing sentences from a set of words, it is difficult for children with mental retardation to establish both paradigmatic and syntagmatic connections between words.

Norm Slowly developing children generally find it difficult to establish syntagmatic connections.

The grammatical structure of speech also differs in a number of features. Children practically do not use a number of grammatical categories in speech, however, if we compare the number of errors in the use of grammatical forms of words and in the use of grammatical constructions, then errors of the second type clearly predominate. It is difficult for a child to translate a thought into a detailed speech message, although he understands the semantic content of the situation depicted in the picture or the story he read, and he answers the teacher’s questions correctly.

The immaturity of intraspeech mechanisms leads not only to difficulties in the grammatical design of sentences. The main problems relate to the formation of coherent speech. Children cannot retell a short text, compose a story based on a series of plot pictures, or describe a visual situation; creative storytelling is not available to them. The development of the ability to perceive speech reality as something different from the objective world lags behind. Speech activity is characterized by insufficient monologue speech. Due to the unformedness of the concept plan and violations in the programming and grammatical structuring of speech utterances, even a fairy tale is not accessible to children with mental retardation, because it is speech material that is complex in structure and volume. They are also not given the technique of narrative transformation. (E.S. Slepovich, 1990)

The nature of speech disorders in children with mental retardation can be very different, just as the ratio of disorders of individual components of the language system can be different.

The presence of speech underdevelopment in the structure of the defect in mental retardation determines the need for special speech therapy assistance.

It is important to take into account the uniqueness of the formation of speech functions, especially its planning, regulatory functions. With mental retardation, there is a weakness in verbal regulation of actions (V.I. Lubovsky, 1978). Therefore, the child’s actions are characterized by impulsiveness, the adult’s speech has little effect on his activity, the child finds it difficult to consistently perform certain intellectual operations, does not notice his mistakes, loses a specific task, easily switches to side, unimportant stimuli, and cannot inhibit side associations. In this regard, the methodological approach involves the development of all forms of mediation: the use of real objects and substitute objects, visual models, as well as the development of verbal regulation. In various types of activities, it is important to teach children to accompany their actions with speech, to summarize the work performed, and, more importantly, later stages-- draw up instructions for yourself and for others, i.e. teach planning actions.

At school, children with mental retardation have great difficulty mastering writing and reading. Letters that are similar in style or denote oppositional phonemes are often confused. Vowels that are complex in composition are confused. At the initial stages of learning, they are similar to mental retardation (tongue-tied, underdeveloped phonemic hearing). However, they are more productive in playful forms of activity and better understand the content of fairy tales and stories.

When analyzing speech pathology in a child with general speech underdevelopment, it is important to identify the so-called negative symptoms associated with underdevelopment of certain aspects of speech, and “positive” symptoms associated with the child’s attempts to adapt to his speech deficiency. In young children, the former predominate; in older children, the latter predominate, which can become their usual speech stereotype. Secondary positive symptoms may include habitual sound substitutions, habitual use of “babbling” speech, peculiar habitual construction of certain phrases, etc. If the formation of secondary compensatory symptoms occurs without specialist correction, then the developed habitual stereotype of speech communication may become pathological and not contribute to speech communication, but even more complicate it.

When approaching a child with speech pathology, it is always necessary to remember that, no matter how severe speech disorders no matter how they were, they can never be stationary, completely irreversible, the development of speech continues with the most severe forms of its underdevelopment. This is due to the continuing maturation of the child’s central nervous system after birth and the greater compensatory capabilities of the child’s brain. However, in conditions of severe pathology, this ongoing speech and mental development may occur abnormally. One of the most important tasks of corrective measures is to “manage” this development, to possibly “even out” it.

When approaching a child with general speech underdevelopment, it is necessary to answer the following questions:

What is the primary mechanism in general speech underdevelopment?

What is the qualitative characteristic of underdevelopment of all aspects of speech?

Which symptoms in the speech sphere are associated with speech underdevelopment, and which are associated with the child’s compensatory adaptations to his speech deficiency?

What areas of a child’s speech and mental activity are the most intact, based on which speech therapy measures can be most successfully carried out?

What are the future paths of speech and mental development of this child?

Only after such an analysis can a diagnosis of a speech disorder be substantiated.

With properly organized correctional work, children with mental retardation demonstrate a leap in development - what today they can only do with the help of a teacher in the conditions of special experimental training, tomorrow they will begin to do independently. They are able to graduate from public school, study at technical schools, and in some cases, at a university.

Features of the emotional sphere of children with mental retardation

Children with developmental delays are usually characterized by emotional instability. They have difficulty adapting to children's groups; they are characterized by mood swings and increased fatigue.

Z. Trzhesohlava identifies weak emotional stability, impaired self-control in all types of activities, aggressive behavior and its provocative nature, difficulties in adapting to the children's group during play and activities, fussiness, frequent mood swings, uncertainty, and a sense of fear as the leading characteristics of preschoolers with mental retardation. , mannerisms, familiarity towards an adult.

M. Vagnerova points to a large number of reactions directed against the will of parents, a frequent lack of correct understanding of social role and position, insufficient differentiation of persons and things, and pronounced difficulties in distinguishing the most important features of interpersonal relationships.

V.V. Lebedinsky points out the special dependence of the logic of development of children with mental retardation on the conditions of upbringing. In his opinion, neglect can cause pathological development of a person with mental retardation, such as mental instability: inability to inhibit one’s emotions and desires, impulsiveness, lack of a sense of duty and responsibility. In conditions of overprotection, psychogenic mental retardation manifests itself in the formation of egocentric attitudes, inability to exert volition and work. In psychotraumatic conditions of upbringing, where cruelty or crude authoritarianism predominate, neurotic personality development is often formed, in which mental retardation will manifest itself in a lack of initiative and independence, timidity, and timidity. V.V. Lebedinsky associates the features of the clinical and psychological picture of mental retardation with the prevailing mood background. In children with a heightened euphoric mood, impulsivity and psychomotor disinhibition predominate, outwardly imitating children's cheerfulness and spontaneity. Children with a predominance of low mood are characterized by a tendency to timidity, timidity, and fear.

Children with mental retardation, as a rule, do not report their own feelings of sympathy or do so in a non-verbal form: they take hands, cuddle, smile.

Problems are noted in the formation of the moral and ethical sphere: the sphere of social emotions suffers, children are not ready for emotionally “warm” relationships with peers, emotional contacts with close adults may be disrupted, children are poorly oriented in moral and ethical standards of behavior.

They cannot organize their behavior only under conditions of systematic training, but they are quite organized and active in play activities, independent drawing, listening and reproducing fairy tales, etc. Often they cannot perform a familiar task in new conditions.

E.S. Slepovich notes the changes that have occurred with children in a situation of uncritical acceptance of their activities, rewards for any achievements: the emotional background of gaming activity has changed, it has become joyful, calm, the children’s relationships in the game have become more friendly. The aimless, chaotic walking around the room has disappeared. Most children now have favorite toys and games. Positive emotions in children were caused by adults' assessment of the success of their play activities. They constantly turned to the teacher for confirmation of their achievements and were very sensitive to praise. The greatest satisfaction came from following the learned rules for organizing and developing a story game to the letter. Interestingly, the favorite toy or game was often assigned to a specific child. Other children could also play with it, but priority in a situation where two children wanted to play the same game or with the same toy belonged to the one to whom this toy was unofficially assigned. E.S. Slepovich associates this fact with the peculiarities of the correctional intervention, during which not only was every possible way encouraged and instilled interest in the toy, but also quite strict standards for interpersonal communication of children in the group were set.

Features of communicative behavior of children with mental retardation

The child gains experience in social and interpersonal relationships in the process of communicating with adults and peers. Communication between children with mental retardation is extremely poor in content and means, both from adult to child and from child to child. For example, in gaming activity this is revealed in the difficulties of isolating, comprehending and modeling interpersonal relationships. In gaming relationships, business relationships predominate, with almost no emphasis on non-situational and personal contacts: the simulated interpersonal relationships are specific, insufficiently emotional, the rules governing them are rigid and exclude any options. Often the requirements are reduced to one or two, with a complete loss of connection with the interpersonal relationships that the partners model. Normal s and rules are specific in nature and take into account the position of only one side. At the same time, the process of implementing the rules often does not correspond to the logic of the development of relations. There is no flexibility in the application of rules. It is likely that the external logic of real actions is much more accessible to preschoolers with mental retardation than the logic of social relations.

These children have a reduced need to communicate with both peers and adults. Most showed increased anxiety towards the adults on whom they depended. A new person attracts their attention to a much lesser extent than a new object. If there are difficulties in activities, such a child is more likely to stop working than to turn to an adult for help. At the same time, the ratio of different types of contacts with adults is characterized by a sharp predominance of business ones, which are often represented by requests like “Give me”, “I don’t want to study”, “Will my mother pick me up?” etc. They rarely come into contact with adults on their own initiative. The number of contacts caused by a cognitive attitude towards objects of activity is extremely small; Personal contacts with adults are relatively rare.

Features of play activities of children with mental retardation

E.S. Slepovich divides violations of the play activity of preschoolers with mental retardation into two types: violations associated with insufficient development of play as an activity, directly resulting from psychological characteristics children of this category; specific violations characteristic of this type of activity such as play. Specific violations of the game include: 1) difficulties in the formation of the motivational-goal component (inadequacy of the stage of generating a plan, extremely narrow variability in finding ways to implement it, lack of need for self-improvement of one’s activities); 2) story-based play for children with mental retardation - sedentary education, because when creating a plan and a plan for its implementation, life material acts as a strict limiter for these children, and not as a starting point for creative combinations of real events; 3) the operational side of gaming activity is specific (narrow specific nature of substitution, rigid fixation of both the role itself and the method of its implementation); 4) superficial modeling of the world of relationships. E.S. Slepovich names difficulties in forming the level of images, ideas and actions as the reasons for play impairments in older preschoolers with mental retardation; insufficiency of regulation of activities carried out by image-representations; lack of communication along the adult-child, child-child lines; difficulties in understanding the world of human relations.

Compared to the norm, children with mental retardation have decreased interest in play and toys. This is manifested in the fact that children quite rarely, on their own initiative, turn to toys, especially those with a plot that represent living beings (dolls, bears, various animals). Children with mild form ZPR can use the doll as a play partner. Children with a severe form of mental retardation prefer multifunctional toys, while the actions performed with them are more object-oriented than playful. E.S. Slepovich, who studied the play activity of preschool children with mental retardation, notes that throughout the entire first section of the experiment, she and her colleagues were unable to establish the appearance of favorite toys in children in the group. They were not interested in them, did not try to pick them up, examine them, touch them, or get acquainted with the principle of their operation or their purpose. From conversations with parents, it turned out that the majority of preschoolers with mental retardation did not give preference to any toy at home. These facts are important in the context of the fact that at the initial stage the game is determined by the toy (D.V. Mendzheritskaya, 1946; A.P. Usova, 1976; S.L. Novoselova, 1986). It acts for the child as a generalized standard of the surrounding reality. In addition, the use of an animated doll as a play partner is one of the most significant prerequisites for role-playing games (F.I. Fradkina, 1946; D.B. Elkonin, 1978). The role behavior of children with mental retardation is impulsive; they are less rule-oriented than children with a normal level of development. The role and the role rule contained in it often do not act as a regulator of activity for them. For example, in the game "Hospital" the patient grabs and goes through the doctor's game attributes. Children with mental retardation communicate little during play, play associations are unstable, conflicts often arise, collective play without the help of a teacher does not work out well, and their actions are mostly of the nature of side-by-side activities. Only in isolated cases do relationships arise regarding the game, aimed at organizing it, regulating relationships between children, and making adjustments to the development of the plot.

These children experience significant difficulties in creating an imaginary situation and taking on a role. Story play as a joint activity does not arise. The motivational and goal-oriented basis of gaming activity is violated: activity in gaming behavior is sharply reduced, pronounced difficulties arise in independently creating a game plan and in its purposeful deployment. The game is mainly non-verbal in nature. Even when actions are directed at an animate partner (whose role is most often played by a doll), cases of role-playing speech are rare. As a rule, preschoolers do not associate the play actions they perform with the name of the role they have taken on. To the question “What are you playing?” they name one of the actions being performed or a core, generalized action: “I’m putting the doll to bed.” The role and the imaginary situation are not isolated and not played out. The point of the game is, as a rule, to perform actions with toys and game attributes. At the same time, notes E.S. Slepovich, children with mental retardation of varying degrees of severity, unlike mentally retarded preschoolers, always performed actions that were adequate to the objects and toys with which they operated. In their actions with game attributes, a correct focus on the properties of the objects used was noted, although ideas about game actions characteristic of one or another game attribute are not yet clear enough, the operations are side by side, not structured, and the most significant actions are not highlighted. Sometimes important operations were omitted and emphasis was placed on auxiliary ones. E.S. Slepovich and her colleagues did not record a single case of generalizing a chain of game actions and replacing them with a word. Due to limited understanding of the simulated situation, these children’s games used a significantly smaller number of toys and game attributes than were in the play corner. The use of multifunctional toys as substitute objects was rare. In this case, a multifunctional object was given one, strictly fixed meaning. For example, a stick could only be a thermometer and was used specifically in the game "Hospital". The word-name limited the purpose of the plotless toy, as if assigning it to a specific game. There was almost no transfer of meaning from one item to another during the game process. The play actions of children with severe mental retardation were organized in short chains (1-3 actions). Often they did not have the logical sequence that is characteristic of everyday situations; the same action could be repeated several times. Only story toys were used as substitutes for real objects.

Children with mental retardation have difficulty developing the idea of ​​a game; game plots are stereotypical, mainly on everyday topics. Their implementation is situational, unstable, and depends on random associations. The most effective type of incentive for the emergence of play behavior is the type of incentive in which the adult fully implements the organizational stage of the game. E.S. Slepovich notes that maximum specification by adults of the structure and nature of play activity leads to the fact that for the first time, children with mental retardation develop actions that model relationships, although their share is small (14%). This is explained by the lack of understanding of the real actions of adults, which can be transferred to a game situation. The actions themselves, both playful and objective, are poor in character, not as varied and expressive as normal. They often do not correlate with the task as a whole. The dependence on the subject conditions of activity is clearly expressed. Gaming behavior is unemotional. Substitution actions, concreteness of play actions, and the ability to generalize them using words are not sufficiently developed. Children in this category cannot independently identify a conditional play situation and designate it with a word. Overall the game is uncreative. Without the help of an adult, children tend to reduce the conventional plan of the game to a real plan of objective activity (E.K. Ivanova, L.V. Kuznetsova, E.S. Slepovich). The lack of actualization of the motives for play activity leads to the fact that in most cases children join the game only at the request of an adult. When mastering a didactic game, they cannot simultaneously focus on the game and didactic tasks, and the didactic task is more easily understood, which turns the didactic game into an exercise.

Preschoolers with a severe form of mental retardation have virtually no story-based play. The meaning of their activity is to perform short chains of object-based and object-game actions with toys and unformed material. The plot does not stand out, there is virtually no role. Individual play actions were recorded, but they were not yet connected with an imaginary situation, so neither individual nor joint games were observed. In play groups with children with mild forms of mental retardation, they act as a living doll. In the individual activities of older preschoolers with a severe form of mental retardation, only individual prerequisites for plot play can be traced, mainly short chains of play actions. When playing with a child with a mild form of mental retardation, they rise to a higher level. They identify the prerequisites for a role-playing game: the focus of actions on a partner, the adequate nature of game actions, calling oneself by the name of an adult (although the adult himself singles out this name for them). When an adult performs goal-setting functions in a story game, children understand that they need to play, but they do not master the operational side of the game even at an elementary level (unlike children with a mild form of mental retardation, who in such a situation easily accept the operational side of the game).

E.S. Slepovich, who studied the play activity of preschool children with mental retardation, notes the following changes in it. They are shown in the following table.

Changes in the play activities of preschoolers with various forms ZPR as a result of a formative experiment (E.S. Slepovich, 1990)

	Mild form of mental retardation	Severe form of mental retardation
Play behavior activity	It has grown significantly, they acted as initiators, took on organizational functions (distributed roles, selected game attributes, organized the playing space), and performed the functions of observers and controllers. The activity of play behavior depended less and less on the degree of influence of the adult.	Growing up, we were performers and played second roles.
Basic game actions	Plot-displaying, the number of actions modeling relationships has increased. At the same time, the social layer of relations was not sufficiently comprehended. The games reproduced those relationships that caught the eye. Shades of meaning were missed.	Plot and display. Actions modeling relationships are episodic. There were object-games.
Game speech	Appeals to each other as partners in joint gaming activities prevailed.	Their appeals and responses as role bearers predominated.
Motivation for story games	The main motive of story games is the reproduction of role-playing actions. At the same time, actions began to be curtailed, their concreteness was lost, they conveyed only their general purpose, entire chains of actions were designated using words.	The main motive is the reproduction of role-playing actions. Game time was often increased due to extremely detailed recreation of the game situation and game actions. No curtailment of actions was observed.
Modeling of subject and social worlds	Substitute items were tied to any one replaced item. When modeling social area life experience acted as the most severe limiter on children’s activities. Without a generalized sign in which the essence of role-playing behavior was concentrated, the game fell apart (for example, the game “Hospital” could not take place without a white coat).	These trends are even more pronounced.
Initial story line	It developed due to the transition to another, and was its logical continuation.	They finished implementing their role in a limited game situation, thereby ending the game.
Development of the story game	Not happening. At the level of creating a plan for a story game, it turns into the activity of producing learned stories, and the standards for constructing a story game turn into clichés.	These trends are already observed at the level of operations.
Conflicts	Disagreements were recorded due to inconsistency: game actions to everyday ideas or a model given in class; plan for the implementation of the plot according to the model available in their experience; distribution of toys in cases where, in the opinion of children, there were not enough of them.	Almost no conflicts related to gaming activities were observed. These children usually unquestioningly and uncritically followed the instructions of their partners with a mild form of mental retardation. Sometimes there were disputes over the distribution of toys.

E.S. Slepovich and S.S. Kharin (1988) draw the following conclusions regarding the characteristics of the play activity of preschoolers with mental retardation:

The group of older preschoolers with mental retardation is heterogeneous in terms of the level of development of play activities;

all preschoolers with mental retardation have sharply reduced activity in the field of independent play activities;

there is no or very rare interest in toys;

children with mental retardation of varying degrees of severity cannot independently organize joint activities within the framework of a story game;

for the emergence of a plot game, the targeted intervention of an adult is necessary, which should be expressed in the fact that he completely carries out the organizational stage of the game, starting from determining the theme of the game, the game society and the distribution of roles, ending with a detailed description of the ways of implementing the plot as a whole and each specific role;

Outside of the described system of influence, children with mental retardation can only have procedural play activities with elements of a plot, which are activities nearby or activities together;

preschoolers with mental retardation have significant difficulties in forming an imaginary situation that gives the game meaning and makes it a motivated activity (children with a mild form of mental retardation isolate play actions within the framework of an imaginary situation, although they cannot identify the play situation itself without the help of an adult; in children with severe it was not possible to record actions in an imaginary situation using the ZPR form);

behind the difficulties in creating an imaginary situation in the game is the poverty of the figurative sphere: insufficient generalization and reversibility of knowledge and ideas developed in life experience, difficulties in arbitrarily operating with data from direct life experience, low emotional coloring of actions;

A particular difficulty for preschoolers with mental retardation is the identification and awareness of the world of relationships between people and the associated orientation in the subordination of roles, as well as the implementation of role relationships according to the rules;

Within the framework of the forms and methods of organizing play behavior of older preschoolers traditionally used in preschool institutions, aimed mainly at replenishing the stock of knowledge about the reality that children must model during play, it is impossible to develop play activity in children with mental retardation.

Readiness for schooling (school maturity) of children with mental retardation

The problem of studying and preparing for teaching children with mental retardation over the past 20 years has been intensively developed by employees of the Institute of Correctional Pedagogy of the Russian Academy of Education (V.I. Lubovsky, M.S. Pevzner, N.A. Tsypina, N.A. Nikashina, K. S. Lebedinskaya, G. I. Zharenkova, I. F. Markovskaya, R. D. Triger, S. G. Shevchenko, G. M. Kapustina).

Learning ability is considered as receptivity to learning, to dosed assistance, the ability to generalize, to build an indicative basis for activity (B.G. Ananyev, N.A. Menchinskaya, Z.I. Kalmykova, A.Ya. Ivanova, S.L. Rubinshtein, P.Ya.Galperin, N.F.Talyzina). Readiness for schooling is understood as a complex of qualities that form the ability to learn (A.V. Zaporozhets, A.N. Leontyev, V.S. Mukhina, A.A. Lyublinskaya). This set of qualities includes the child’s understanding of the meaning of educational tasks, their difference from practical ones, awareness of how to perform an action, skills of self-control and self-esteem, development of volitional qualities, the ability to observe, listen, remember, and achieve solutions to assigned tasks.

Intellectual, personal, socio-psychological, and volitional readiness for school are important. U.V. Ulienkova developed special diagnostic criteria for readiness for learning for six-year-old children with mental retardation. Among these parameters, the following structural components of educational activities are highlighted:

orientational and motivational;

operating rooms;

regulatory.

Based on them, the author developed a level assessment of the development of the general learning ability of children with mental retardation. This assessment was carried out during the training process, in addition to the training and diagnostic tasks. The procedure included a number of tasks, such as laying out a Christmas tree from geometric shapes, drawing flags according to a pattern, as well as completing tasks according to verbal (speech) instructions from an adult.

It was found that in the process of completing these tasks, a normally developing preschooler easily learned to work according to an adult’s instructions, control his actions, and actively evaluate his successes and failures.

Six-year-old children with mental retardation showed lower learning ability, lack of interest in assigned activities, lack of self-regulation and control, as well as a lack of a critical attitude towards the results of their activities. These children lacked such important indicators of readiness for learning as:

formation of a relatively stable attitude towards cognitive activity;

sufficient self-control at all stages of the task;

the presence of speech self-regulation.

According to the data of S.G. Shevchenko, among older preschoolers with mental retardation, the stock of specific knowledge is poorer than normal; not generalized, but scattered knowledge, associated mainly with a specific situation, predominates.

V.V. Lebedinsky provides data from a study of children with mental retardation using the children's version of the Wechsler test. It revealed the heterogeneity of intelligence quotient (IQ) indicators in groups with various forms of mental retardation (I.F. Markovskaya, V.V. Lebedinsky, O.S. Nikolskaya, 1977; G. Shaumarov, 1980). In children with a predominance of organic infantilism, the total data (general, verbal and nonverbal indicators) were distributed within the age norm. However, despite the favorable average indicators, low results were revealed on individual verbal subtests, for example, on the Vocabulary subtest, in half the cases the results were in the zone of mental retardation. At the same time, the results on nonverbal subtests were within normal limits. In children with a predominance of cognitive impairment, the main indicators were in the intermediate zone between mental retardation and the norm. Low scores were obtained not only on verbal, but also on nonverbal subtests. The more pronounced severity of the defect reduced the compensatory capabilities of these children. If in children of the first group, with low verbal indicators, the overall CI reached the normal level due to high scores on nonverbal subtests, then in the children of the second group, the overall CI was sharply reduced.

E.A. Ekzhanova studied the formation of visual activity in children with mental retardation at 6 years of age (1989). Her work revealed low interest among subjects in the process and results of visual activity. Although children by the age of 6 usually have access to a simple object drawing, however, unlike the drawings of a normally developing child, it is extremely schematic and simplified. The images are inexpressive, small, and of the same type. Plot drawings are inaccessible to most children; children cannot formulate the intent of the plot. Many drawings are at the level of an undifferentiated schema.

Characterized by undeveloped technical drawing skills, awkward hand movements, children cannot hold a pencil or brush correctly, have difficulty drawing small objects, and do not know coloring techniques.

E.S. Slepovich notes that in order for older preschoolers with mental retardation to be able to use graphic spatial models, special training is necessary. At the same time, they require a stage that is not present when teaching normally developing children, at which a certain similarity between the model and the object is preserved (research by I.A. Atemasov showed that the objectification of geometric shapes is typical for children 3 years old (1984)).

School achievements of children with mental retardation

Symptoms of mental retardation, which partially appeared already in early, preschool and preschool age, manifest themselves very sharply at school, where the child is given tasks that require a complex and indirect form of activity. In the primary school population, the number of children with mental retardation ranges from 5 to 11% (E.M. Mastyukova, 1997). In order to move to a new form of activity, the child must rebuild the motives of his activity. Children with psychophysical infantilism are not ready for this, which is why, by the time they enter school, they are not ripe for learning in it, therefore they cannot rebuild the infantile forms of their behavior in accordance with the requirements of learning at school, they are poorly included in educational activities, they do not perceive tasks, do not show interest in them, at the first stages of learning do not understand school requirements, do not obey the rules school life.

During classes, children with mental retardation are lethargic, apathetic, and unproductive. Sometimes they experience headaches and increased fatigue. In the game they are animated, proactive and emotionally interested. They still seem to retain the motives for activity characteristic of a preschool child. They can only complete tasks that are related to their interests and game. Performing tasks that require complex types of voluntary activity in school conditions that are new to the child turns out to be objectively beyond his strength. This circumstance underlies the unproductiveness in the education of such children.

These children are intellectually intact. They can understand the meaning of a fairy tale or story, a plot picture, that is accessible to their age; they can arrange a series of pictures in the proper sequence and compose a story based on them. They know how to use the assistance provided to them when performing one or another semantic task. But when such a student is not provided with an individual approach that takes into account his mental characteristics, and proper assistance is not provided at school and at home for learning difficulties, pedagogical neglect occurs, which aggravates these difficulties. Timely and correctly provided assistance leads to complete reversibility of these conditions (Vlasova T.A., 1971).

The reduced learning ability of children with mental retardation is manifested in the fact that during learning they form sedentary connections that are reproduced in an unchanged order. When moving from one system of knowledge and skills to another, these children tend to use old methods without modifying them. T.V. Egorova notes as one of the features of younger schoolchildren with mental retardation the difficulty of arbitrarily moving to another point of view, specific to a given situation. Thus, in the “Odd Four” task, it is necessary to break away from ideas about the real value and usefulness of objects and choose an object that does not fit into the logic set by other things in one specific situation. There is also a weakening of regulation in all parts of the learning process.

The school performance of such children is especially affected by:

psychological climate in the class (a creative, friendly atmosphere, imbued with comradely concern, contributes not only to improved academic performance, but also has a beneficial effect on the formation of positive character traits of the student). V.V. Lebedinsky points out that a special study of the relationships of high-achieving children with low-achieving classmates with mental retardation made it possible to identify important role this factor in the formation of a low level of aspirations of children with mental retardation. The main criterion for the overall assessment of a student by his classmates was the factor of school performance. Children typically ranked their peers on a scale of intelligence based on their school performance. The results of the experiment showed that the criterion of academic performance affects the assessment of not only intellectual, personal, but even physical qualities child. Thus, students who performed excellently, as a rule, were classified by others not only as the smartest and most diligent, but also as kind and even beautiful. Conversely, underachieving children with mental retardation were assessed by their high-achieving peers not only as stupid and lazy, but also as angry and ugly. Even such an objective and easy-to-assess indicator as growth was underestimated in relation to underachievers. Such a wide irradiation of negative attitudes towards the intelligence, personal qualities and even appearance of children with mental retardation caused their isolation within the class. Successful students did not want to be friends with them or sit at the same desk. There were only a small number of children with whom children with mental retardation had emotional contacts and sympathies; These were also mostly underachieving schoolchildren. The unfavorable position of children with mental retardation among their peers gives rise to a number of hypercompensatory reactions in them. In an effort to ensure their success, they fix themselves even more firmly on an earlier intellectual level;

personal qualities of the teacher (first of all, this is reasonable exactingness, the ability to find the positive in a child and, relying on this positive, help him overcome learning difficulties).

Children with a severe form of mental retardation studying in a public school do not acquire the knowledge provided for by the program. They do not develop educational motivation. The unfavorable position of children with mental retardation among their peers gives rise to a number of hypercompensatory reactions in them. In an effort to ensure their success, they are even more firmly fixed at an earlier intellectual level, their performance is low, self-regulation is insufficient, all types of thinking lag behind in the development, especially verbal-logical, there are significant defects in the development of speech, and intellectual activity is significantly reduced.

After a year of study in the first grade, children with mental retardation do not learn letters, have difficulty in sound-letter analysis, cannot write from dictation, show an unpreparedness for language observations, cannot isolate a sentence from a text, and cannot cope with basic counting operations. However, they can make good drawings. In this case, when comparing the drawings with the elements of writing, it is clear that the child is not yet ready for abstract school activities.

General characteristics of the activities of children with mental retardation

According to research by psychophysiologists, the effectiveness of any activity (actions, operations, skills) depends on the level of brain activation. This dependence can be described by a dome-shaped curve, showing that the highest results are achieved not with the highest activation of the nervous system, but with a lower one, called the optimal functional state. It best meets the requirements that the content of the problem being solved places on the energy supply of brain structures. A shift in the functional state in any direction from the optimal is accompanied by a decrease in the effectiveness of both mental and physical actions. In the laboratory of K. Mangina, more than 2000 children and adolescents with normal levels and mental retardation were studied. It turned out that activation in children with mental retardation went beyond the established corridor of the optimal functional state or was unstable. If, during the test, the child was kept within the optimal activation corridor, this contributed to a more rapid formation of specific skills in children with mental retardation. To maintain the level of activation within a given corridor, the experimenter resorted to various types of influences that excite or calm the child (sound tones, flashes of light, instructions - stand up, sit down, jump, focus attention on the frequency of your breathing, etc.) (Danilova N. N., 1998).

A change in functional state immediately entails a change in reaction time. With brain lesions of various etiologies, a significant slowdown in the response rate is observed. Registration of reaction time is widely used to identify the psychophysiological characteristics of people with different levels of intellectual development. The lower the level of intelligence development, the more variable the reaction time (both simple and in a choice situation) and the more errors in the response. The study showed that the reaction time to the simplest sensory signals in a simple experimental situation in children with mental retardation aged 8-9 years is 28 ms longer than in 8-year-old children with normal development. By the age of 13-14, this difference decreases somewhat. At the same time, such an elementary operation as detecting a signal, which does not require any sensory experience, is carried out by children with mental retardation slower than their peers with normal intelligence, not only at 8-9, but also at 13-14 years old. The sensory experience itself, expressed in the reaction of “stalling” a signal in an experimental situation, is formed more slowly in children with mental retardation than in the norm. Just as slowly, it transforms under the influence of changing circumstances. In this feature, children with mental retardation differ significantly from children with mental retardation: in children with mental retardation, the reaction time to rare signals after their more frequent presentation decreased much more quickly and sharply than in normal conditions and with mental retardation. This behavior strategy is explained by the fact that children with LD have a short support row, i.e. they evaluate only a small series of events following one another, and not the entire probabilistic situation as a whole. Therefore, their sensory experience sometimes turns out to be more flexible than that of children normally and with mental retardation (L.I. Peresleni, 1984).

The mental activity of children with mental retardation is characterized by a lack of readiness to solve intellectual problems, insufficient expression of the indicative stage in solving them, inability to make the necessary mental effort, and inability to control oneself during the task (Diaz Gonzalez, T.V. Egorova, E.K. Ivanova , N.V. Elfimova, Z.I. Kalmykova, V.I. Lubovsky, K. Novakova, T.D. Puskaeva, T.A. Strekalova, U.V. Ulienkova).

I.A. Korobeinikov, who studied the characteristics of the activities of preschool children with mental retardation, conditionally divided them into two groups:

children who show interest in the work being performed, but when faced with difficulties, the focus of their activities is disrupted, their activity decreases, and their actions become indecisive; in most cases, external stimulation and the creation of a situation of success improve work productivity and help overcome this phenomenon (much depends on the teacher here);

children with less expressed interest in work and low activity; when difficulties arise, interest and activity decrease even more; significant stimulation is required to continue completing tasks; Despite the large amount of various types of assistance (including visual teaching), their level of achievement is significantly lower than in the first group.

The cognitive activity of these children is specific:

they do not strive to use the time allotted to complete the task, express few judgments in the conjectural plan until the task is solved;

when memorizing, the time allocated for initial orientation in the task is not used effectively;

need constant external encouragement to remember;

do not know how to use techniques to facilitate memorization;

the level of self-control is sharply reduced;

activity weakly depends on the goal;

a difficult goal is replaced by a simpler and more familiar one;

with a slight change, the conditions for solving problems become erroneous;

experience great difficulty in finding a general way to solve a number of problems when a wide transfer is required;

There is superficiality and incompleteness of knowledge about objects and phenomena that are outside the circle with which adults purposefully introduce the child.

T.V. Egorova notes a reduced tone of cognitive activity in children with mental retardation. In the process of solving the problem, they were characterized by the absence of the necessary emotional and volitional tension; there was no active search for the most rational methods of solution. Usually these children were satisfied with the easiest, rather than the most correct, course of action. That is why the cognitive task often remained unsolved even when there were sufficient potential opportunities for its adequate solution.

G.I. Zharkova, T.D. Puskaeva believe that the following features are characteristic of the activities of a child with mental retardation:

impulsiveness of actions,

low significance of the sample and low level of self-control when performing the task (examines the sample very briefly, does not check it either during the task or after its completion, the sample does not attract attention to itself even if the task is unsatisfactorily completed),

lack of purposefulness in work (chaotic actions, inability to subordinate one’s activities to a single goal, to think about the progress of work),

low productivity (even in role-playing games there are not enough creative elements),

violations or loss of the activity program (G.I. Zharenkova notes that the greatest difficulties are caused by tasks that involve the sequential implementation of several links),

pronounced difficulties in verbalizing activities, which sometimes take the form of a gross discrepancy between speech and action.

When working on a task, the requirement to explain the execution of each operation causes an emotional breakdown; children refuse to answer or complete the task, tears appear in their eyes; They explain all this by the onset of fatigue. However, as soon as preschoolers begin to work silently, a large number of mistakes appear, and they notice their mistakes only when the actions begin to be verbalized again.

All children with mental retardation experience a decrease in activity in all types of activities.

E.S. Slepovich notes that children with mental retardation experience great difficulties in transferring knowledge acquired in classes into independent activities. All preschoolers with mental retardation have difficulty reducing and automating actions, the programming function of speech is severely impaired, there are significant difficulties in forming a generalization even on a visual basis, there is no voluntary regulation of activity when performing tasks in accordance with the task without constant reliance on visualization and objective actions, narrowness of transfer is noted. T.V. Egorova, who studied the characteristics of memory and thinking of primary schoolchildren with mental retardation, believes that one of the reasons for the low ability of these children to transfer is their specific attitude towards unresolved problems: unlike high-achieving schoolchildren, children with mental retardation are not inclined to retain consciousness unresolved issues, do not try to return to them. Difficulties in voluntary regulation of activity lead to the fact that they have a clear tendency to turn any sample into a stamp. The formation of a conditionally dynamic position in verbal terms in children with mental retardation is impossible without the use of permanent material supports.

Research by N.L. Belopolskaya (1976) showed that children with mental retardation develop a low level of aspirations, which is noted not only in relation to academic subjects, but also any other activity containing evaluative aspects.

L.S. Slavina and T.V. Egorova note the same trends among younger schoolchildren.

Sometimes students are difficult to train and educate, and the main reason for this is a special, in contrast to the norm, state of mental development of the individual, called in defectology “mental retardation” (RD). Every second chronically underachieving child has mental retardation.

Essence of the disease

IN general view this condition is characterized by slow development of thinking, memory, perception, attention, speech, and the emotional-volitional aspect. Due to limitations in mental and cognitive capabilities, the child is not able to successfully complete the tasks and demands placed on him by society. For the first time, these limitations are clearly manifested and noticed by adults when the child comes to school. He cannot conduct sustainable, purposeful activity; gaming interests and gaming motivation predominate in him, while pronounced difficulties arise in distributing and switching attention. Such a child is not able to exert mental effort and strain when performing serious tasks, which quickly leads to school failure in one or many subjects.

A study of students with mental retardation showed that the basis of school difficulties is not intellectual disability, but impaired mental performance. This manifests itself in difficulties concentrating on cognitive tasks for a long time, low productivity during study, excessive fussiness or lethargy, and disturbances in switching attention. Children with mental retardation have a qualitatively different structure of the defect, in contrast to mentally retarded children; in their impairment there is no totality in the underdevelopment of mental functions. Children with mental retardation are better able to accept help from adults and are able to transfer the demonstrated mental techniques to a new, similar task. Such children need to be provided with comprehensive assistance from psychologists and teachers, which includes an individual approach to learning, classes with a teacher of the deaf, a psychologist, along with drug therapy.

Constitutional ZPR

Developmental delay has a form that is determined by heredity. Children with this type of mental retardation are characterized by harmonious immaturity of the physique and at the same time of the psyche, which indicates the presence of harmonious psychophysical infantilism. The mood of such a child is predominantly positive; he quickly forgets grievances. At the same time, due to the immature emotional-volitional sphere, the formation of educational motivation is not possible. Children quickly get used to school, but do not accept the new rules of behavior: they are late for lessons, play during lessons and involve their neighbors in games, turn letters in notebooks into flowers. Such a child does not divide grades into “good” and “bad”; he is happy to have them in his notebook.

From the very beginning of school, the child turns into a persistently underachieving student, for which there are reasons. Due to his immature emotional-volitional sphere, he only does what is related to his interests. And due to the immaturity of intellectual development, children of this age have insufficiently formed mental operations, memory, speech, they have a small stock of ideas about the world and knowledge.

For constitutional mental retardation, the prognosis will be favorable with targeted pedagogical influence in an accessible playful form. Developmental correction work and an individual approach will eliminate the problems described above. If you need to leave children for the second year of study, this will not traumatize them, they will easily accept the new team and get used to the new teacher painlessly.

Somatogenic ZPR

Children of this type of disease are born to healthy parents. Developmental delay occurs due to past diseases that affect brain functions: chronic infections, allergies, dystrophy, persistent asthenia, dysentery. The child's intelligence was not initially impaired, but due to his absent-mindedness he becomes unproductive in the learning process.

At school, children of this type of mental retardation experience serious difficulties in adaptation, they cannot get used to a new team for a long time, they are bored and often cry. They are passive, inactive and lacking initiative. They are always polite with adults and perceive situations adequately, but if they are not influenced by guidance, they will be disorganized and helpless. Such children have great difficulties with learning at school, arising from reduced achievement motivation, lack of interest in the proposed tasks, and an inability and unwillingness to overcome difficulties in completing them. In a state of fatigue, the child’s answers are thoughtless and absurd, and affective inhibition often occurs: children are afraid to answer incorrectly and prefer to remain silent. Also, with severe fatigue, it increases headache, appetite decreases, pain occurs near the heart, which children use as a reason to refuse work if difficulties arise.

Children with somatogenic mental retardation need systematic medical and pedagogical assistance. It is best to place them in schools sanatorium type or create a medicinal-pedagogical regime in ordinary classes.

Psychogenic mental retardation

Children of this type of mental retardation are characterized by normal physical development, they are somatically healthy. Research has shown that many children have brain dysfunction. The reason for their mental infantilism is a socio-psychological factor - unfavorable upbringing conditions: monotonous contacts and living environment, emotional deprivation (lack of maternal warmth, emotional relationships), deprivation, poor individual motivation. As a result, the child’s intellectual motivation decreases, superficiality of emotions, lack of independence in behavior, and infantilism in relationships are observed.

This childhood anomaly often develops in dysfunctional families. In an asocially permissive family, there is no proper supervision over the child; there is emotional rejection along with permissiveness. Due to the lifestyle of the parents, the baby experiences impulsive reactions, involuntary behavior, and his intellectual activity is extinguished. This condition often becomes fertile ground for the emergence of stable antisocial attitudes; the child is pedagogically neglected. In an authoritarian-conflict family, the child’s atmosphere is saturated with conflicts between adults. Parents influence the child through suppression and punishment, systematically traumatizing the child’s psyche. He becomes passive, dependent, downtrodden, and feels increased anxiety.

are not interested in productive activities and have unstable attention. Their behavior reveals bias, individualism, aggression, or excessive submissiveness and accommodation.

The teacher must show interest in such a child, in addition, an individual approach and intensive training are necessary. Then children will easily fill the gaps in knowledge in a regular boarding school.

ZPR of cerebral-organic nature

In this case, the disorder of personality development is caused by a local disorder of brain functions. Causes of abnormalities in brain development: pathology of pregnancy, including severe toxicosis, viral flu suffered by the mother, alcoholism and drug addiction of parents, birth pathologies and injuries, asphyxia, serious illnesses in the 1st year of life, infectious diseases.

All children of this type of mental retardation have cerebral asthenia, which manifests itself in excessive fatigue, decreased performance, poor concentration and memory. Thought processes are imperfect, and the productivity indicators of such children are close to those of oligophrenic children. They acquire knowledge in fragments, and they quickly forget, so in the end school year students turn into persistent underachievers.

The lag in the development of intelligence in these children is combined with an immature emotional-volitional sphere, the manifestations of which are deep and crude. Children take a long time to learn the rules of relationships, do not correlate their emotional reactions with a certain situation, and are insensitive to mistakes. They are led by a game, so a conflict constantly arises between “I want” and “I must.”

Teaching children of this type of mental retardation according to the regular program is futile. They need systematic, competent correctional and pedagogical support.

• Causes of mental retardation
• Symptoms
• Treatment

Mental retardation in children (the disease is often referred to as mental retardation) is a slow pace of improvement of certain mental functions: thinking, emotional-volitional sphere, attention, memory, which lags behind generally accepted norms for a particular age.

The disease is diagnosed in the preschool or primary school period. It is most often discovered during pre-entry testing before school entry. It is expressed in limited ideas, lack of knowledge, inability for intellectual activity, the predominance of gaming, purely childish interests, immaturity of thinking. In each individual case, the causes of the disease are different.

Causes of mental retardation

In medicine, various causes of mental retardation in children are identified:

1. Biological:

• pregnancy pathologies: severe toxicosis, intoxication, infections, injuries;
• prematurity;
• intrauterine fetal hypoxia;
• asphyxia during childbirth;
• infectious, toxic, traumatic diseases at an early age;
• genetic predisposition;
• trauma during childbirth;
• lagging behind peers in physical development;
• somatic diseases (disturbances in the functioning of various organs);
• damage to certain areas of the central nervous system.

2. Social:

• restriction of life activity for a long time;
• mental trauma;
• unfavorable living conditions;
• pedagogical neglect.

Depending on the factors that ultimately led to mental retardation, several types of disease are distinguished, on the basis of which a number of classifications have been compiled.

Types of mental retardation

In medicine, there are several classifications (domestic and foreign) of mental retardation in children. The most famous are M. S. Pevzner and T. A. Vlasova, K. S. Lebedinskaya, P. P. Kovalev. Most often in modern domestic psychology use the classification of K. S. Lebedinskaya.

1. Constitutional ZPR determined by heredity.
2. Somatogenic ZPR acquired as a result of a previous disease that affected the child’s brain functions: allergies, chronic infections, dystrophy, dysentery, persistent asthenia, etc.
3. Psychogenic mental retardation determined by socio-psychological factors: such children are brought up in unfavorable conditions: monotonous environment, narrow circle of friends, lack of maternal love, poverty of emotional relationships, deprivation.
4. Cerebral-organic mental retardation observed in the case of serious, pathological abnormalities in brain development and is most often determined by complications during pregnancy (toxicosis, viral diseases, asphyxia, parental alcoholism or drug addiction, infections, birth injuries, etc.).

Each of the types according to this classification differs not only in the causes of the disease, but also in symptoms and course of treatment.

Symptoms of mental retardation

A diagnosis of mental retardation can be made with confidence only at the threshold of school, when obvious difficulties arise in preparing for the educational process. However, with careful monitoring of the child, symptoms of the disease can be noticed earlier. These may include:

• skills and abilities lagging behind peers: the child cannot perform the simplest actions characteristic of his age (putting on shoes, dressing, personal hygiene skills, eating independently);
• unsociability and excessive isolation: if he avoids other children and does not participate in common games, this should alert adults;
• indecision;
• aggressiveness;
• anxiety;
• During infancy, such children begin to hold their heads later, take their first steps, and speak.

With mental retardation in children, manifestations of mental retardation and signs of impairment in the emotional-volitional sphere, which is very important for the child, are equally possible. Often there is a combination of them. There are cases when a child with mental retardation is practically no different from the same age, but most often the retardation is quite noticeable. The final diagnosis is made by a pediatric neurologist during a targeted or preventive examination.

Differences from mental retardation

If by the end of junior (4th grade) school age signs of mental retardation remain, doctors begin to talk about either mental retardation (MR) or constitutional infantilism. These diseases are different:

• with mental and intellectual underdevelopment, mental and intellectual underdevelopment is irreversible; with mental retardation, everything can be corrected with the proper approach;
• children with mental retardation differ from mentally retarded children in their ability to use the help that is provided to them and independently transfer it to new tasks;
• a child with mental retardation tries to understand what he read, whereas with LD there is no such desire.

There is no need to give up when making a diagnosis. Modern psychology and pedagogy can offer comprehensive assistance to such children and their parents.

Treatment of mental retardation in children

Practice shows that children with mental retardation may well become students in a regular general education school, rather than in a special correctional school. Adults (teachers and parents) must understand that the difficulties of teaching such children at the very beginning of their school life are not at all the result of their laziness or carelessness: they have objective, sufficient serious reasons, which must be jointly and successfully overcome. Such children should be provided with comprehensive assistance from parents, psychologists, and teachers.

It includes:

• individual approach to each child;
• classes with a psychologist and a teacher of the deaf (who deals with children’s learning problems);
• in some cases - drug therapy.

Many parents find it difficult to accept the fact that their child, due to his developmental characteristics, will learn slower than other children. But this needs to be done to help the little schoolchild. Parental care, attention, patience, coupled with qualified help specialists (speech pathologist, psychotherapist) will help provide him with targeted education and create favorable conditions for learning.

The diagnosis of mental retardation is made mainly in preschool or school age, when the child faces learning problems. With timely correction and medical care, it is possible to completely overcome developmental problems, but early diagnosis of the pathology is quite difficult.

What is mental retardation?

Mental retardation, abbreviated as MDD, is a lag in development from the norms accepted for a certain age. With mental retardation, certain cognitive functions - thinking, memory, attention, and the emotional sphere - suffer.

Causes of developmental delay

ZPR may arise due to various reasons, they can be conditionally divided into biological and social.

Biological reasons include:

• damage to the central nervous system during fetal development: injuries and infections during pregnancy, bad habits of the mother, fetal hypoxia;
• prematurity, symptoms of jaundice;
• hydrocephalus;
• malformations and neoplasms of the brain;
• epilepsy;
• congenital endocrine pathologies;
• hereditary diseases - phenylketonuria, homocystinuria, histidinemia, Down syndrome;
• severe infectious diseases (meningitis, meningoencephalitis, sepsis);
• heart disease, kidney disease;
• rickets;
• impairment of sensory functions (vision, hearing).

TO social reasons can be attributed:

• restriction of the baby’s life activity;
• unfavorable educational conditions, pedagogical neglect;
• frequent psychological traumas in a child’s life.

Symptoms and signs of developmental delay

Signs of mental retardation can be suspected by paying attention to the characteristics of mental functions:

1. Perception: slow, inaccurate, inability to form a holistic image. Children with mental retardation perceive information better visually than auditorily.
2. Attention: superficial, unstable, short-term. Any external stimuli contribute to switching attention.
3. Memory: visual-figurative memory predominates, mosaic memorization of information, low mental activity when reproducing information.
4. Thinking: violation of figurative thinking, abstract and logical thinking only with the help of a teacher or parent. Children with mental retardation cannot draw conclusions from what has been said, summarize information, or draw a conclusion.
5. Speech: distortion of articulation of sounds, limitation of vocabulary, difficulties in constructing a statement, impaired auditory differentiation, delayed speech development, dyslalia, dyslexia, dysgraphia.

Psychology of children with mental retardation

1. Interpersonal communication: children without developmental disabilities rarely communicate with lagging children and do not accept them in games. In a peer group, a child with mental retardation practically does not interact with others. Many children prefer to play separately. During lessons, children with mental retardation work alone, cooperation is rare, and communication with others is limited. Children who are lagging behind in most cases communicate with children younger than themselves, who accept them better. Some kids completely avoid contact with the team.
2. Emotional sphere: children with mental retardation are emotionally unstable, labile, suggestible and not independent. They are often in a state of anxiety, restlessness, and affect. They are characterized by frequent mood swings and contrast in the expression of emotions. Inappropriate cheerfulness and uplifting mood may be observed. Children with mental retardation cannot characterize their emotional state, have difficulty identifying the emotions of others, and are often aggressive. Such children are characterized by low self-esteem, uncertainty, and attachment to one of their peers.

As a result of problems in the emotional sphere and the sphere of interpersonal relationships, children with mental retardation often prefer loneliness; they lose confidence in themselves.

According to the classification by K. S. Lebedinskaya according to the etiopathogenetic principle, ZPR can be of the following types:

1. Delayed development of constitutional etiology is uncomplicated psychophysical infantilism, in which the cognitive and emotional spheres are at an early stage of development.
2. ZPR of somatogenic etiology - occurs as a result of severe diseases suffered during early childhood.
3. Mental retardation of psychogenic etiology is the result of unfavorable upbringing conditions (overprotection, impulsiveness, lability, authoritarianism on the part of parents).
4. ZPR of cerebral-organic etiology.

Complications and consequences of ZPR

The consequences of mental retardation have a greater impact on the psychological health of the individual. If the problem is not corrected, the child continues to move away from the team, and his self-esteem decreases. In future social adaptation for such children is difficult. Along with the progression of mental retardation, writing and speech deteriorate.

Diagnosis of mental retardation

Early diagnosis of mental retardation is difficult. This is due to the fact that to confirm the diagnosis, a comparative analysis of the child’s mental development with age norms is necessary.

The degree and nature of developmental delay is determined collectively by a psychotherapist, psychologist, speech therapist, and defectologist.

Mental development includes assessment of the following criteria:

• speech and pre-speech development;
• memory and thinking;
• perception (knowledge of objects and parts of the body, colors, shapes, orientation in space);
• attention;
• gaming and visual activities;
• level of self-care skills;
• communication skills and self-awareness;
• school skills.

The Denver test, the Bayley scale, the IQ test and others are used for examination.

Additionally, the following instrumental studies may be indicated:

• CT and MRI of the brain.

How to cure mental retardation

The main help for children with mental retardation consists of long-term psychological and pedagogical correction, which is aimed at improving the emotional, communicative and cognitive sphere. Its essence is to conduct classes with a psychologist, speech therapist, defectologist, or psychiatrist.

If psychocorrection is not enough, it is supported by drug treatment based on nootropic drugs.

The main drugs for drug correction:

• Piracetam, Encephabol, Aminalon, Phenibut, Cerebrolysin, Actovegin;
• Glycine;
• homeopathic medicines – Cerebrum compositum;
• vitamins and vitamin-like products – vitamin B, Neuromultivit, Magne B6;
• antioxidants and antihypoxants – Mexidol, Cytoflavin;
• general tonics – Cogitum, Lecithin, Elcar.

Preventing developmental problems

To avoid CPR, you need to follow simple rules:

• create favorable conditions for pregnancy and childbirth;
• create a friendly environment in the family;
• closely monitor the child’s condition from the first days of life;
• promptly treat any kind of disease in the baby;
• engage with the child and develop him from an early age.

Of no small importance in the prevention of mental retardation is the physical and emotional contact between mother and baby. Hugs, kisses, and touches help the child feel calm and confident, navigate a new environment, and adequately perceive the world around him.

Doctor pays attention

1. There are 2 dangerous extremes to which many parents of children with mental retardation fall - overprotection and indifference. In both the first and second variants, personality development is inhibited. Overprotection does not allow the child to develop, since the parents do everything for him and treat the student like a little child. Indifference on the part of adults takes away the child’s incentive and desire to develop and learn something new.
2. Exist special schools for children with mental retardation or separate classes in general education schools based on a correctional and developmental education model. In special classes, optimal conditions have been created for teaching special children - small numbers, individual lessons that allow you not to miss psychological characteristics child, useful for his development.

The sooner parents pay attention to mental retardation or stop denying it, the higher the likelihood of full compensation for deficiencies in the emotional and cognitive sphere. Timely correction will prevent future psychological trauma associated with the awareness of one’s inadequacy and helplessness in the flow of general learning.

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