!!! The formation of images of the surrounding world is carried out on the basis of the ability to sense individual simple properties of objects and phenomena. A person receives all information about the world around him and about himself in the form of sensations and perceptions.
Feeling – elementary mental process, a reflection of individual properties of objects or phenomena that directly affect the senses. Perception is a holistic reflection of objects and phenomena of the objective world under their direct influence in this moment to the senses. Representation is a visual image of an object or phenomenon that arises on the basis of past experience (data of sensations and perceptions) by reproducing it in memory or imagination.
Perception is not reduced to the sum of individual sensations; the formation of a holistic image of objects is the result of a complex interaction of sensations and traces of past perceptions already existing in the cerebral cortex. It is this interaction that appears to be disrupted in children with delayed mental development.
Reasons for violations Low speed receiving and processing information; Lack of formation of perceptual actions, i.e. transformations of sensory information that lead to the creation of a holistic image of an object. Lack of formation of orienting activity.
With mental retardation, the following properties of perception are impaired: Objectivity and structure: children find it difficult to recognize objects from an unusual angle. They have difficulty recognizing objects in outline or diagrammatic images, especially if they are crossed out or overlap each other. They do not always recognize and often mix up letters that are similar in style or their individual elements; they often mistakenly perceive combinations of letters, etc.
Integrity of perception: they experience difficulty in perceiving the need to isolate individual elements from an object that is perceived as a single whole, in constructing a holistic image. Selectivity: difficulty in distinguishing a Selectivity figure (object) from the background. Constancy: difficulties also appear when perception conditions deteriorate (rotated images, decreased brightness and clarity). Meaningfulness: difficulties in understanding the essence of the Meaningfulness of an object, associated with the peculiarities of thinking.
In children, not only individual properties of perception are impaired, but also perception as an activity, which includes both a motivational-target component and an operational one. Children with mental retardation are characterized by a general passivity of perception, which manifests itself in attempts to replace a more complex task with an easier one, in the desire to “get rid of it” quickly.
No primary disturbances at the level of the sensory organs are found in children with mental retardation. However, shortcomings of perception appear at the level of complex sensory-perceptual functions, that is, they are a consequence of the immaturity of analytical-synthetic activity.
Preschool age Visual perception: difficulties in perceiving complex images, forming a holistic image, so the child does not notice much, misses details. Difficulty in identifying a figure against a background, in recognizing objects from an unusual angle, and, if necessary, recognizing objects in contour or schematic images (crossed out or overlapping).
All children with mental retardation can easily cope with the task of making pictures that depict a single object. When the plot becomes more complex, the unusual direction of the cut (diagonal) and an increase in the number of parts lead to the appearance of gross mistakes and actions by trial and error, that is, children cannot draw up and think through a plan of action in advance.
Auditory perception: there are no difficulties in perceiving any simple influences. Difficulties in differentiating speech sounds: In isolating sounds in a word, When pronouncing words quickly, In words that are polysyllabic and close in pronunciation. Insufficiency in the analytical and synthetic activity of the auditory analyzer.
Tactile perception: a complex of tactile and motor sensations. Tactile sensitivity: difficulty in determining the location of touch on different areas of the skin, the location of the touch is not determined accurately, and is often not localized. Motor sensations: inaccuracy, sensations of disproportion of movements, the impression of motor awkwardness in children, difficulties in perceiving poses without visual control.
Perception based on the integration of visual and motor sensations: a significant lag in the perception of space. Integration of visual-auditory perception: significant difficulties in perception, which can be reflected in learning to read and write in the future.
School age Peculiarities of perception of preschoolers continue to manifest themselves at primary school age: slowness, fragmentation, and inaccuracy of perception are noted.
With age, the perception of children with mental retardation improves, especially the reaction time indicators, which reflect the speed of perception, improve significantly. This is manifested in both qualitative characteristics and quantitative indicators.
At the same time, the faster the development of perception occurs, the more conscious it becomes. Delays in the development of visual and auditory perception are overcome more quickly. This happens especially intensively during the period of learning to read and write. Tactile perception develops more slowly.
In pedagogy
Peculiarities of perception of children with mental retardation are due to a violation of the search function; If the child does not know in advance where the desired object is, it can be difficult for him to find it. This is explained by the fact that the slowness of recognition does not allow the child to quickly examine the reality immediately surrounding him. Of particular note are the shortcomings of spatial perception, which is formed in the process of complex interaction of vision, motor analyzer and touch. This interaction develops late in children with mental retardation and remains defective for a long time.
A significant lack of perception in these children is a significant slowdown in the process of processing information received through the senses. In conditions of short-term perception of certain objects or phenomena, many details remain “uncaptured”, as if invisible. A child with mental retardation perceives less material over a certain period of time than his normally developing peer.
The differences between children with mental retardation and their normally developing peers become more and more pronounced as the objects become more complex and the conditions of perception deteriorate.
The speed of perception in children with mental retardation becomes noticeably lower than normal for a given age, with virtually any deviation from optimal conditions. This effect is caused by low illumination, turning an object at an unusual angle, and the presence of other similar objects nearby. These features were clearly identified in a study conducted by P.B Shamny.
If a child with mental retardation is simultaneously affected by several factors that complicate perception, the result turns out to be significantly worse than could be expected based on their independent action. True, the interaction of unfavorable conditions occurs normally, but it is not so significant.
Peculiarities of perception of children with mental retardation are also due to a violation of the search function. If a child does not know in advance where the desired object is, it can be difficult for him to find it. This is partly noted by the fact that the slowness of recognition does not allow the child to quickly explore the space immediately surrounding him. The lack of methodical search also affects.
There is also evidence indicating that children with mental retardation experience difficulty when it comes to isolating individual elements from an object that is perceived as a whole. The slowness of perception processes should undoubtedly be taken into account when teaching children with mental retardation (when explaining material, showing pictures, etc.).
Thus, visual perception, while remaining a controlled, meaningful, intellectual process, based on the use of methods and means fixed in culture, allows one to penetrate deeper into the environment and learn more complex aspects of reality. Without a doubt, children with mental retardation, having low level development of perception, need correctional work, which requires the use of a variety of techniques and methods.
Read further:Perception is a complex process of general reflection of all properties of phenomena and objects. It covers in totality all judgments, actions, memory, emotional reflection, and one’s own feelings. Sensation reflects in our consciousness the individual properties and qualities of an object. The process of perception analyzes and synthesizes past experience of accumulated sensations and displays them in consciousness.
Perception disorders in children associated with insufficient stimuli and information cannot correctly orient the child in environment. Perception is a reflection of complex stimulation.
When defining the objects around us, we are based on the image obtained as a result of previous experience. When receiving an inferior experience due to some physical defect, we perceive an image that does not correspond to its actual qualities.
Possessing full vision, a person, when determining an image, is based on its objectivity, integrity, meaningfulness, and significance. Moreover, the integrity of an object or phenomenon consists of various nuances united by one whole.
Deficiencies in perception in children with visual impairments leave a negative imprint on their intellectual and mental development.
From infancy, a child with defective vision perceives the world and objects in a distorted form. He cannot clearly define the edges of an object, the color scheme is devoid of shades, and the spatial sensation of the object is difficult.
Against the background of impaired perception, children develop fears, imagined, illusory objects that cause confusion and poor orientation in the world around them.
As a result of visual defects, children may develop optical (visual) agnosia - impaired recognition visual images.
Children with impaired visual perception have a reduced cognitive horizon. At all stages of development, mental underdevelopment is observed, and sometimes development mental illness. Sometimes perception in children with visual impairments entails impaired or underdeveloped speech and decreased hearing.
The educational process of such children is difficult and lags behind their peers.
Space and time are difficult for children with limited vision to comprehend. Sometimes they confuse right and left side, for a long time they cannot remember the seasons, hours, months. All this is the result of a violation of children's perception of the environment.
In addition, children with visual impairments have a narrowness of perception. They have poor orientation and notice fewer details.
Often, impaired perception in children becomes the cause of failure at school, because... It is difficult for them to determine priorities, isolate the main thing, and grasp the essence.
Their school problems begin from the first days, when they need to learn to write and read. As a result of distorted vision, the child cannot correctly depict letters.
All this gives rise to mental disorders in the child.
Perception in children with mental retardation
Delayed mental development of children - DPD - can be caused by both organic and psychological factors. One of them is a violation of children’s perception of the world around them. 
Often, children's incorrect perception of the surrounding reality entails mental problems.
Sometimes they say that pictures drawn by children with mental retardation characterize their painful state, i.e. sick psyche. But, in fact, children with impaired perception of the world paint the world as they see it.
Consequently, the perception of the world, which is the result of a violation of visual or auditory images, entails a violation in the development of the child. Distorted perception in children with mental retardation is an expression of their sensations of surrounding objects and phenomena.
In children with disorders visual function sometimes a scattered, fragmented visual perception is formed, while knowledge of the world is also fragmentary. As a result, an incorrect perception of the environment occurs and leads to developmental delays.
In the process of child development, it is necessary to use memory and thinking, but in a situation where these concepts are distorted, perceptions are disrupted and the level of development is reduced.
The perception of children with mental retardation compared to their peers has much fewer facets of perceived sensations.
A small volume of perceived material, weak differences in object configurations, difficulties in perceiving plots and phenomena, slowness of perceptions, difficulties with orientation - all this affects the development of the child.
Perceptual dysfunction in children should be a special concern for adults. Without their help, it is difficult for a child to enter the complex adult world.
Irina Lekomtseva
Peculiarities of perception in children with mental retardation
Introduction.
Perception - very important element process of cognition of the surrounding world. From birth, or even earlier, the child is able to perceive the world with the help of the senses, and only then learns to remember and analyze the information received. Even the youngest children perceive bright colors, voices, intonations, music, touch and react to them. As they get older, they consciously strive to see, hear, touch and taste more. At this stage, they can already generalize the information received and consciously express their attitude towards what they perceive.
The perception of children with mental retardation is superficial; they often miss the essential characteristics of things and objects. Due to impaired visual and auditory perception, children with mental retardation have insufficiently formed spatial-temporal representations.
1. Theoretical basis studying the characteristics of perception in mental retardation.
Perception is the awareness of a sensory given object or phenomenon. In perception, a world of people, things, and phenomena are usually spread out before us, filled with a certain meaning for us and involved in diverse relationships. The perception of an object is never carried out at an elementary level: it captures the highest levels mental activity. The following properties of perception are distinguished: objectivity (attribution of information obtained from outside world to this world); integrity (perception gives a holistic image of an object. It is formed on the basis of a generalization of knowledge about the individual properties and qualities of an object, obtained in the form of various sensations; structure (the source of the structure of perception lies in the characteristics of the reflected objects themselves); constancy (the relative constancy of some properties of objects when it changes conditions). Constancy is most observed in the visual perception of color, size and shape of objects); meaningfulness of perception (consciously perceiving an object means mentally naming it, that is, assigning it to a certain group, class, summing it up into a word); apperception (perception depends not only on irritation, but also on the subject himself. The dependence of perception on the content in mental life of a person, from the characteristics of his personality, is called apperception. Classifications of perception are based on differences in the analyzers involved in perception. In accordance with which analyzer plays the predominant role in perception, visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory perceptions are distinguished. The basis of another type of classification of perceptions is the forms of existence of matter: perception of space (combining the work of visual, tactile-kinesthetic and vestibular analyzers); time perception; perception of movement (in the perception of movement a significant role is undoubtedly played by indirect signs, creating an indirect impression of movement. Thus, the impression of movement can cause an unusual position of the parts of the figure for a body at rest. Thus, perception is a visual-figurative reflection of the objects and phenomena of reality acting on the sense organs at the moment in their totality various properties and parts. There are such properties of perception as objectivity, integrity, constancy, structure of perception. Also distinguished are the perception of time, the perception of movement and the perception of space.
2. Peculiarities of the psyche of children with mental retardation.
Mental retardation (MDD) is a syndrome of temporary lag in the development of the psyche as a whole or its individual functions, a slowdown in the rate of realization of the body’s potential capabilities, often detected upon entering school and is expressed in an insufficiency of the general stock of knowledge, limited ideas, immaturity of thinking, low intellectual focus, predominance of gaming interests, rapid oversaturation in intellectual activity. Within the framework of the psychological and pedagogical approach, quite a large amount of material has been accumulated, indicating specific features children with mental retardation, distinguishing them, on the one hand, from children with normal mental development, and on the other, from the mentally retarded. These children do not have specific hearing, vision, or musculoskeletal disorders, severe violations speech, they are not mentally retarded. At the same time, most of them have polymorphic clinical symptoms: immaturity of complex forms of behavior, deficiencies in purposeful activity against the background of increased exhaustion, impaired performance, and encephalopathic disorders. The memory of children with mental retardation is characterized by qualitative originality. 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. Special attention deserves consideration of features speech development children with mental retardation. Many of them have defects in sound pronunciation and phonemic perception. In children with mental retardation, all the prerequisites for the development of thinking are impaired to one degree or another. Children have difficulty concentrating on a task. These children have impaired perception, they have a rather meager experience in their arsenal - all this determines the thinking characteristics of a child with mental retardation. The thinking of children with mental retardation is more intact than that of mentally retarded children; the ability to generalize, abstract, accept help, and transfer skills to other situations is more preserved. General disadvantages mental activity of children with mental retardation: lack of formation of cognitive, search motivation (children strive to avoid any intellectual effort); lack of a pronounced orientation stage when solving mental problems; low mental activity; stereotypical thinking, its stereotypedness. By the senior preschool age, children with mental retardation have not yet developed a level of verbal-language skills that corresponds to age-related capabilities. logical thinking- children do not highlight essential features when generalizing, but generalize either according to situational or functional features. In children with mental retardation, the following features of attention are noted: low concentration (the child’s inability to concentrate on a task or on any activity); quick distractibility; rapid exhaustion and fatigue; low level of attention stability (children cannot engage in the same activity for a long time); narrow attention span. Voluntary attention is more severely impaired. Thus, mental retardation manifests itself in a slow rate of maturation of the emotional-volitional sphere, as well as in intellectual failure. The latter is manifested in the fact that the child’s intellectual abilities do not correspond to his age. A significant lag and originality is found in mental activity. All children with mental retardation have memory deficiencies, and this applies to all types of memorization: involuntary and voluntary, short-term and long-term. The lag in mental activity and memory characteristics are most clearly manifested in the process of solving problems associated with such components of mental activity as analysis, synthesis, generalization and abstraction.
3. Originality of perception in children with mental retardation.
Children with mental retardation are characterized primarily by insufficient, limited, fragmented knowledge about the world around them. This cannot be attributed only to the poverty of the child’s experience (in fact, this poverty of experience itself is largely due to the fact that children’s perception is incomplete and does not provide sufficient information): when mental development is delayed, such properties of perception as objectivity and structure are impaired. This manifests itself in the fact that children find it difficult to recognize objects from an unusual angle. In addition, they have difficulty recognizing objects in outline or diagrammatic drawings, especially if they are crossed out or overlap each other. Children do not always recognize and often mix letters of similar design or their individual elements. The integrity of perception also suffers. Children with mental retardation experience difficulty when it is necessary to isolate individual elements from an object that is perceived as a single whole. These children find it difficult to complete the construction of a complete image for any part of it; the images of objects themselves in the children’s imagination are not accurate enough, and the sheer number of images - ideas they have is much smaller compared to normally developing children. A holistic image from individual elements is formed slowly. For example, if it's normal developing child show three randomly located points on the screen, he will immediately involuntarily perceive them as the vertices of an imaginary triangle. When mental development is delayed, the formation of such a single image requires more time. These shortcomings of perception usually lead to the child not noticing something in the world around him, “not seeing” much of what the teacher shows, demonstrating visual aids, Pictures. A significant disadvantage of perception in these children is a significant slowdown in the process of processing information received through the senses. In conditions of short-term perception of certain objects or phenomena, many details remain “uncaptured”, as if invisible. A child with mental retardation perceives less material over a certain period of time than his normally developing peer. The speed of perception in children with mental retardation becomes noticeably lower than normal for a given age in virtually any deviation from optimal conditions. This effect is caused by low illumination, rotation of an object at an unusual angle, the presence of other similar objects in the neighborhood (in visual perception), very frequent changes of signals (objects, combination, simultaneous appearance of several signals (especially in auditory perception). A. N. Tsymbalyuk believes, that children with mental retardation are characterized by a general passivity of perception, which manifests itself in attempts to replace a more complex task with an easier one, in the desire to “get rid of it” quickly. This feature causes children to have an extremely low level of analyzing observation, manifested in: a limited scope of analysis; the predominance of analysis over synthesis; mixing of essential and non-essential features; preferential fixation of attention on visible differences in objects; rare use of generalized terms and concepts. Children with mental retardation lack purposefulness and systematicity in examining an object, no matter what channel of perception they use (visual, tactile or auditory). Search actions are characterized by chaos and impulsiveness. When performing tasks to analyze objects, children produce results that are less complete and insufficiently accurate, omit small details, and are one-sided.
Z. M. Dunaeva, studying the process of spatial perception in children with mental retardation, came to the conclusion that orientation in space is grossly impaired in this category of children. This further negatively affects the formation of graphic writing and reading skills. With age, the perception of children with mental retardation improves, especially the reaction time indicators, which reflect the speed of perception, improve significantly. Disadvantages of visual and auditory perception in children whom we attribute to mental retardation, they are also noted by foreign authors, such as V. Cruikshank; M. Frostig; S. Kurtis and others. The considered shortcomings of perception can be overcome through special correctional activities, which should include the development of orienting activities, the formation of perceptual operations, and the active verbalization of the process of perception and comprehension of images. Thus, children with mental retardation have such perceptual features as slowness of perception and processing of information; decreased perceptual activity; insufficient completeness and accuracy of perception; lack of focus; low level of analytical perception; impaired hand-eye coordination; material is perceived superficially by a child with mental retardation.
4. Originality visual forms perception in children with mental retardation.
Multiple studies visual perception in children with mental retardation showed that, despite the absence of sensory impairments (i.e., a decrease in acuity and loss of visual fields, they perform many receptive visual operations more slowly than their normally developing peers. According to Tomin T.B., a decrease in efficiency perception should inevitably lead to relative poverty and insufficient differentiation of visual images, which is very often observed in children with mental retardation (in the absence of correctional and developmental work with them). In addition, the results of research by B. I. Bely, as well as other scientists. suggested that the disorder in the development of forms of visual perception, determined in children with mental retardation, is due to both the immaturity of the right frontal lobe and the delayed maturation of the left hemisphere structures that ensure activity and arbitrariness of perception.
IN Lately Electrophysiological observations made it possible to confirm the hypothesis about the underdevelopment of the functions of the left hemisphere in children with mental retardation. This is one of the main reasons that the processes of formation of color discrimination, spatial orientation and size discrimination, which take place quite spontaneously in normally developing children, are formed later in children with mental retardation, and work on their development cannot also take place spontaneously, but requires significant efforts teachers. What are the features of the development of visual forms in children with mental retardation?
4.1 Color perception.
One of the features of the visual perception of preschoolers with mental retardation is its lack of differentiation: they do not always accurately recognize the color and color shades inherent in surrounding objects. Their color discrimination processes, compared to the norm, lag behind in their development. So, by the age of two, children with mental retardation distinguish mainly only two colors: red and blue, and some do not even do this. Only by the age of three to four years do they develop the ability to correctly recognize four saturated colors: red, blue, yellow, green. At five and six years old, children begin to distinguish not only these colors, but (when carrying out special work) also white and black. However, they have difficulty naming weakly saturated colors. To designate color shades, preschoolers sometimes use names derived from the names of objects (lemon, brick, etc.). Most often they are replaced by the names of primary colors (for example, pink - red, blue - blue). The ability to differentiate primary colors and their shades in children appears only by the age of seven, and for some even later. In addition, preschoolers with mental retardation long time, in comparison with the norm, is not able to properly navigate the names of objects for which a certain color is constant, typical sign. For example, normally developing children at five to six years old correctly understand tasks and list objects that are red (red traffic light, fire, green (Christmas tree, grass in summer, etc.), yellow (sun, egg yolk). In contrast, children with mental retardation at the same age, many items are named for which given color not typical constant sign: clothes, toys, i.e. those objects that make up the immediate environment or accidentally come into view.
Inaccurate recognition by preschoolers with mental retardation of colors and color shades inherent in objects reduces their ability to understand the world around them, and this in turn negatively affects their future life. educational activities. In order to help a child with mental retardation, timely special qualified pedagogical assistance is needed. Only in this case will it be possible to increase the level of development of such a child.
4.2 Visual perception of shape.
Children with mental retardation have a different ability to distinguish shapes (based on planar and volumetric geometric shapes). But here it is also necessary to note that this ability is formed relatively later than in normally developing children. Thus, at five years old, children with mental retardation are poorly able to differentiate and name basic geometric shapes. They especially find it difficult to distinguish between a circle and an oval, a square and a rectangle. The triangle is easier for them than all of the above. Shape discrimination of such geometric figures as rhombus, cube, sphere, cone, cylinder occurs only at school age. But the situation can change significantly if corrective and developmental work is started on time with the child. The result is that in most cases children catch up with their typically developing peers. One of bright examples development of the function of visual perception of form is a game. For example, such games as “Find your match”, “Find the key for the bear”, “Loto” (geometric), etc. Game development is acceptable at home, but it is better if this and much more takes place under the strict guidance of specialists.
4.3 Visual perception of size.
Magnitude is a relative concept. The idea of it is formed much more labor than the concept of color and shape. Therefore, the perception of magnitude is least formed in children under school age with ZPR. But at the same time the visual ratio is quite high level. Difficulties arise when identifying a feature by name and when independent name. IN life situations children with mental retardation operate only with the concepts of “big” and “small”; any other concepts: “long - short”, “wide - narrow”, etc. are used only undifferentiated or are likened. At six - seven years old they can compare the size of a small number of objects: two - three.
All of the above allows us to judge the lag in the development of visual perception of size in preschool children with mental retardation in relation to the norm. This makes it necessary to carry out corrective pedagogical work on the development and formation of this ability.
4.4 Features of the development of orientation in space.
Spatial orientation is one of the important types of human activity. It is necessary for many areas of activity. Scientists who studied children with mental retardation noted their poor orientation in the surrounding space. Spatial impairments are considered by many researchers to be one of the most common defects encountered in mental retardation. Psychologists distinguish three main stages in the development of space cognition in normally developing children. The first of them presupposes the child’s ability to move, actively move in space and thus take a comfortable position for viewing the surroundings. The second is associated with mastering objective actions, which allow one to expand the practical experience of knowing the properties of objects and their spatial relationships. The third stage begins with the development of speech, that is, with the emergence of the ability to reflect and generalize spatial categories in words. Great importance has mastery of prepositions that express spatial relationships, and adverbs with the help of which directions are indicated. Children with mental retardation also go through three main stages of spatial cognition, however, at a later date and with some originality. Clumsiness and lack of coordination of movements, usually characteristic of this group of children, have a negative impact on the formation of the ability to visually familiarize themselves with what is in relative proximity to the child. Also, children with mental retardation are characterized by delays and deficiencies in the formation of objective actions and related actions. voluntary movements, which, in turn, negatively affects the development of this category of children’s ability to navigate the surrounding space. Defective development of verbal and logical thinking does not provide the basis for a full understanding of the spatial situation in which the child, for one reason or another, must navigate. Children with mental retardation for a long time are not oriented from the sides own body and the body of the interlocutor. They have difficulty identifying relationships between objects. They find it difficult to navigate in the space of a sheet, as well as in a large space - in a group, a gym, in the yard.
This suggests the conclusion that in children with mental retardation it is necessary to purposefully develop the ability to spatial orientation by carrying out correctional and pedagogical work with them. So, summing up all of the above, we can conclude that the development of visual forms of perception in children with mental retardation differs in its originality compared to normally developing children: different temporal characteristics, qualitatively different content, inferiority and unevenness of content. Obviously, such deficiencies cannot be eliminated by themselves; a clear, thoughtful, and most importantly timely strategy for the development and correction of visual perception in children is necessary. Only in this case is it possible favorable outcome in child development. The majority of children with mental retardation, with whom correctional and pedagogical work is carried out, subsequently reach the normal level.
Conclusion.
On modern stage development preschool education There are negative trends in the growth of the number of children with mental retardation, due, on the one hand, to the unfavorable microenvironment of children's development, and on the other hand, to the insufficient level of preparedness of specialists in preschool institutions. Specialists need to possess a system of theoretical knowledge that focuses on the developmental characteristics of children with developmental delays. In addition, a specialist working with children with mental retardation must have developed practical skills in diagnosing and correcting mental retardation in general and cognitive processes- in particular.
At the present stage, preschool educational institution should carry out a psychological and pedagogical study of children at risk in order to provide timely psycho-correctional assistance to children with mild deviations. The period of preschool childhood is the most favorable for intensive intellectual, emotional, social development. Given that early diagnosis and providing timely correctional and pedagogical assistance, children with mental retardation are able to overcome mental underdevelopment before the start of systematic education. So, children of this category have disturbances in the perception of various modalities and, accordingly, in the perception of objects, phenomena and situations. Let us note that the highlighted features of perception are clearly visible in children of both preschool and primary school age. But, as practice shows, they are gradually smoothed out under the influence of special (corrective) training.
