Features of the development of children with zpr. "Features of mental development of children with mental retardation

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Introduction

1. Delayed mental development: concept, typology

1.1 Etiology, a look at the problem of various authors

1.2 Classification of CRA

2. Features of the development of children with delayed psychological development

2.1 Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with CRA

2.2 Features of the psyche of children with CRA

2.3 Psychological and pedagogical features of the correctional and developmental education of children with CRA

References

Introduction

The problem of the difficulties of adapting children to the conditions of primary school is currently of high relevance. According to the estimates of researchers, depending on the type of school, from 20 to 60% of primary school children have serious difficulties in adapting to the conditions of school education.

A significant number of children study in the mass school who already in the primary grades do not cope with the curriculum and have difficulty in communication. The problem is especially acute for children with mental retardation. The problem of learning these children is one of the most urgent psychological and pedagogical problems.

Children entering school with mental retardation have a number of specific features. In general, they have not formed the skills, skills and knowledge necessary for mastering the program material, which normally developing children usually acquire in the preschool period. In this regard, children are unable (without special assistance) to master the account, reading and writing. They find it difficult to comply with school-wide norms of behavior. They experience difficulties in the arbitrary organization of activities: they do not know how to consistently carry out the instructions of the teacher, to switch on his instructions from one task to another. The difficulties they experience are exacerbated by the weakness of their nervous system: students quickly tire, their performance decreases, and sometimes they simply cease to perform the activity they have begun.

Currently, special psychology and pedagogy has research that reveals the peculiarities of memory, personality, speech, thinking, play activity of children with mental retardation, and has already gained some experience in organizing remedial and developmental assistance to preschoolers and younger students who have difficulty mastering the educational program . At the conclusion of the psychological-medical-pedagogical consultation, children with such a violation are sent to special (correctional) schools or to correctional classes of general education schools, where training is conducted in accordance with their special educational needs for special programs.

The purpose of this work is to study, generalize and characterize the features of the development of children with mental retardation.

The work consists of introduction, main part and bibliography. The total amount of work is 16 pages.

1 . Hmental retardation: concept, typology

1.1 Etiology,  atlook at the problem of various authors

Mental retardation (MAD) - a concept that speaks not about persistent and irreversible mental underdevelopment, but about slowing down its pace, which is more often found when entering the school and is expressed in the insufficiency of the general knowledge, limited ideas, immaturity of thinking, low intellectual focus, predominance of gaming interests, rapid supersaturation in intellectual activity. Unlike children suffering from oligophrenia, these children are smart enough within the limits of the available knowledge, much more productive in using help. At the same time, in some cases, the delay in the development of the emotional sphere (various types of infantilism) will come to the fore, and violations in the intellectual sphere will not be expressed sharply. In other cases, on the contrary, a slowdown in the development of the intellectual sphere will prevail.

Initially, the problem of mental retardation in domestic studies was substantiated by clinicians. The term “mental retardation” is proposed by G.E. Sukhareva. The phenomenon under study is characterized, above all, by a slowed-down rate of mental development, personal immaturity, non-cognitive impairment of cognitive activity, in structure and quantitative indicators that differ from oligophrenia, with a tendency to compensation and reverse development.

An important step in the study of children with CRA was the research of KS Lebedinskaya and her laboratory staff in the 70s-80s. Based on the etiological principle, she identified four main options for mental retardation, which even today are used most productively in providing remedial assistance to children in special institutions. In the clinical and psychological structure of each of the proposed options for mental retardation, there is a specific combination of immaturity of the emotional and intellectual sphere.

In special studies, the concept of mental infantilism is used, by which one understands the option of delayed development, manifested in the immaturity of physical and mental status unusual for the age, and not accompanied by gross intellectual impairment.

Most of the work is aimed at studying the various symptomatic pictures found in children with brain disorders. This is a category of children with a wide range of different psychopathological syndromes that lead to a mental retardation (V. Kruishan). These include children with lesions of the central nervous system (CNS) (of a specific or diffuse nature), speech disorders, learning difficulties, perceptual disorders, hyperkinesias. In addition, this group includes children who do not show any neurophysiological disorders, but nevertheless show the same psychological symptoms as in children with CNS disorders.

An analysis of foreign studies reveals various approaches to the study of CRA and to the development of adequate diagnostic methods. The search for differentiated means for determining forms of CRA, carried out by R. Zazzo and his staff, is mainly aimed at identifying various psychological syndromes and their etiologies for groups of children with CRA. According to R.Zazzo, until now the issue of CRA has been decided on the basis of either only biological or social factors. However, the use of psychological criteria allows to identify the specific features of the defect in various forms of CRA. R.Zazzo puts forward the idea of ​​a heterochronic development, according to which the mental functions in children with impaired mental development are not formed at a single pace. And the more pronounced the defect of mental development, the greater the discrepancy between mental functions and psychobiological age indicators of development. Heterochronia, according to R.Zazzo, does not lead to gross disharmony in the development of a child, since, thanks to compensatory mechanisms, a kind of coordination of personality and environment is carried out. To determine the nature of the CRA, he points out the need to collect the most complete information: data on the pregnancy of the mother, a description of the family environment, the socio-economic level of the family, the moral behavior of the parents and the relationship between them.

A.Wallon pointed out that "a normal child opens through the patient." In the characterization of development, which is still relevant today, A.Wallon assigned the main role to emotions, affectivity. In his opinion, the understanding child follows the feeling child, the cognitive and affective processes are integrated in the course of development. To diagnose according to A.Wallon means not to compare a child with impaired mental development with normally developing children, but to single out the impairment of the nervous system, to determine its level, insufficient integration and coordination of functional systems.

With the emergence of the genetic concept of mental development of the child, the psyche began to be viewed as a reconstructed hierarchical structure that integrates the emerging functions into new indivisible functional systems, depending largely on the maturation of the central nervous system (A.Wallon, R.Zazzo).

A.Vallon highlighted periods of mental development with the dominant "certain functional systems" and a certain type of interaction of the child with the environment. The proposed principles of dependence are relevant in clinical diagnosis in determining the level of the disorder, identifying lack of integration and the relationship of functional physiological systems at a certain stage of development.

Psychological adaptation of children with mental retardation is a problem, the relevance of which is today due to the traditional demands of psychological, educational, clinical and social practice and a certain transformation of ideas about the psychogenetic essence of this status, diagnostic criteria, principles of organization, nature and volume of specialized care.

1. 2classificationsCRA

Mental retardation in children is a complex disorder in which different children suffer from different components of their mental, psychological and physical activity. The delay of mental development is characterized by an uneven formation of the processes of cognitive activity, due to the underdevelopment of speech and thinking, as well as the presence of disorders in the emotional-volitional sphere. The depth of damage and / or the degree of immaturity may also vary. Thus, mental retardation manifests itself in both emotional and volitional immaturity and intellectual deficiency.

G.E. Sukharev, proceeding from the etiopathogenetic principle, singled out the following forms of intellectual disability in children with a retarded development rate, which should be separated from the concept of “oligophrenia”:

1) Intellectual impairment due to unfavorable conditions of the social environment.

2) Intellectual disorders in long-term asthenic conditions caused by somatic diseases.

3) Violations of intellectual activity in various forms of infantilism.

4) Secondary intellectual impairment due to sensory impairments: with impairment of hearing, vision, speech, reading and writing defects.

MS Pevzner in a group of children with CRA describes different variants of psychophysical infantilism, intellectual impairment in cerebroasthenic states.

T.A. Vlasov and M.S. Pevzner (1967) identified two most numerous groups among children with CRA:

1) Children with an impaired pace of physical and mental development.

Causes: slow pace of ripening of the cerebral cortex.
Children of this group are inferior to their peers in physical development, they are distinguished by infantilism in intellectual, emotional and personal development.

2) Children with functional disorders of mental activity.

Causes: minimal organic brain damage.
For children in this group are characterized by weakness of the nervous processes, impaired attention, rapid fatigue and reduced performance.

In the studies of V.V. Kovalev, a classification of borderline states of intellectual deficiency is proposed, including a delayed mental pace developed, where a single factor is assigned the leading role in the pathogenesis; other pathogenetic factors are usually involved in the origin of intellectual deficiency. Within each group, there are variants of the clinical and psychopathological criterion.

Classification with the allocation of several groups of mental retardation rate based on the ratio of "endogenous and exogenous factors", proposed by M.V. Korkina, N. D. Lakosina, A. V. Lichko:

1) dyontogenic forms due to delayed or distorted mental development (variants of mental infantilism);

2) forms caused by organic brain damage in the early stages of ontogenesis;

3) intellectual deficiency, depending on the lack of information at an early age;

4) intellectual failure associated with impaired sensory system.

In the domestic and foreign literature, the psychological characteristics of children with CRA are confirmed by data from a neurological and neurophysiological study. In the neurological state, there are often signs of hydrocephalus, disorders of the craniocerebral innervation, the phenomenon of the erased syndrome, severe vegetative-vascular dystonia. Persistent neurological symptoms of a residual nature are found in 50–92% of such children (P. Schilder, X. Luther, I. F. Markovskaya)

KS Lebedinskaya proposed a medical classification of children with CRA. She identified four main options for the CRA:

1. The delay of mental development of constitutional origin. Causes: metabolic disorders, genotype specificity. Symptoms: delayed physical development, formation of static-dynamic psychomotor functions; intellectual disturbances, emotional and personal immaturity, manifested in affects, behavioral disturbances.

2. Delayed mental development of somatogenic origin. Causes: long-term somatic diseases, infections, allergies. Symptoms: delayed psychomotor and speech development; intellectual disability; neuropathic disorders, expressed in reticence, timidity, shyness, low self-esteem, lack of children's competence; emotional immaturity.

3. Delayed mental development of psychogenic origin. Causes: adverse conditions of education in the early stages of ontogenesis, traumatic microenvironment. Symptoms: lack of formation of children's competence and arbitrary regulation of activity and behavior; pathological personality development; emotional disorders.

4. Delayed mental development of cerebral organic genesis. Causes: point organic lesion of the central nervous system of a residual nature, due to the pathology of pregnancy and childbirth, injuries of the central nervous system and intoxication. Symptoms: delayed psychomotor development, intellectual impairment, organic infantilism.

The presented clinical types of the most resistant forms of CRA mainly differ from each other by the particular structure and nature of the ratio of the two main components of this developmental anomaly: the predominance of intellectual or emotional disorders. In slow motion the formation of cognitive activity with infantilism is associated with a lack of intellectual motivation, and with emotional disorders - the mobility of mental processes.

More often than others of the types mentioned above, there are cerebral organic origin. This type has a great stamina and severity of violations both in the emotional and volitional sphere, and in cognitive activity. A study of the history of children with this type of CID in most cases shows the presence of a fragile organic deficiency of the nervous system, more often a residual nature due to the pathology of pregnancy, prematurity, asphyxia and trauma during childbirth, postnatal violations of the first three years of life of children.

Thus, mental retardation can be considered as a polysymptomatic type of change in the pace and nature of a child’s development, including various combinations of disorders and their manifestations. Nevertheless, in the mental status of a child with CRA, a number of significant features can be identified:

1) in the sensory-perceptual sphere - the immaturity of various systems of analyzers (especially the auditory and visual), the inferiority of the visual-spatial orientation;

2) in the psychomotor sphere - an imbalance in motor activity (hyper- and hypo-activity), impulsivity, difficulty in mastering motor skills, impaired coordination of movement;

3) in the field of thinking - the predominance of simpler mental operations (analysis and synthesis), a decrease in the level of logic and abstract thinking, the difficulty of transition to abstract-analytical forms of thinking;

4) in the mnemonic sphere - the predominance of mechanical memory over the abstract-logical, direct memorization - over the mediated, a decrease in the volumes of short-term and long-term memory, a significant decrease in the ability to involuntarily memorize;

5) in speech development - limited vocabulary, especially active, slowing down in mastering the grammatical structure of speech, defects in pronunciation, difficulties in mastering written speech;

6) in the emotional-volitional sphere - the immaturity of the emotional-volitional activity, infantilism, uncoordinated emotional processes;

7) in the motivational sphere - the predominance of gaming motives, the desire for pleasure, the maladaptation of motives and interests;

8) in the characterological sphere - increasing the likelihood of accentuating characterological features and increasing the likelihood of psychopathic manifestations.

Psychological classification of children with delayed psychological development identifies three forms of mental retardation, depending on their base:

1) emotional immaturity (mental infantilism);

2) low mental tone (prolonged asthenia);

3) disorders of cognitive activity associated with the weakness of memory, attention, mobility of mental processes.

The first two forms of mental retardation are the easiest and most surmountable, and the third form borders on a mild degree of mental retardation.

Thus, despite the heterogeneity of the group of children with CRA, it is possible to identify common features:

1) In case of mental retardation, violations occur early, therefore the development of mental functions occurs unevenly, slowly.

2) For children with ZPR characteristic of uneven formation of mental processes.

3) The most disturbed are the emotional-personal sphere, general characteristics of activity, work capacity: in intellectual activity, the most striking violations occur at the level of verbal and logical thinking with a relatively higher level of development of visual forms of thinking.

2 . Features of the development of children with  delayed psychological development

2.1 Psychological and pedagogical characteristicschildren with CRA

In the framework of the psychological-pedagogical approach, a sufficiently large amount of material has been accumulated, indicating the specific characteristics of children with SPD, distinguishing them, on the one hand, from children with normal mental development, and on the other hand, from mentally retarded children. The degree of violation of the rate of maturation of brain structures, and hence the rate of mental development, may be due to a peculiar combination of adverse biological, social, and psychological and educational factors.

The development of the child’s psyche in domestic and foreign psychology is understood as extremely complex, subject to the interaction of many factors. The degree of violation of the rate of maturation of brain structures, and hence the rate of mental development, may be due to a peculiar combination of adverse biological, social, and psychological and educational factors.

Features of the cognitive sphere of children with CRA are covered in the psychological literature quite widely. V.I.Lubovsky notes the insufficient formation of the voluntary attention of children with CRA, the deficiency of the basic properties of attention: concentration, volume, distribution. The memory of children with CRA is characterized by features that are in a certain dependence on attention and perception disorders. V. G. Lutonyan notes that the productivity of involuntary memorization in children with CRA is much lower than in their normally developing peers.

The explicit lag of children with CRA from normally developing peers is noted by the authors when analyzing their thought processes. The backlog is characterized by an insufficiently high level of formation of all the basic mental operations: analysis, synthesis, abstraction, transfer. In the studies of many scientists, the specifics of the development of cognitive activity of children with CRA are noted. So, SG Shevchenko, studying the features of the speech development of children with CRA, notes that speech defects in such children are clearly manifested against the background of insufficient cognitive activity. The personal characteristics of children with CRA were studied to a much lesser extent. In the works of L.V. Kuznetsova and N.L. Belopolskaya the features of the motivational-volitional sphere are revealed. NL Belopolskaya notes the specifics of the age and individual personality characteristics of children.

Psychologists note weakness of volitional processes characteristic of these children, emotional instability, impulsivity, or lethargy and apathy (L.V. Kuznetsova). For the play activity of many children with CRA is characterized by the inability (without the help of an adult) to deploy a joint game in accordance with the plan.

U.V. Ulyanenkova highlighted the levels of formation of the general ability to learn, which correspond to the level of the child’s intellectual development. The data from these studies are interesting because they allow you to see individual differences within groups of children with CRA, which relate to the characteristics of their emotional-volitional sphere.

In children with CRA, symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity, as well as an increase in anxiety and aggression are noted (M.S. Pevzner).

The changed dynamics of the formation of self-consciousness is manifested in children with CRA in a kind of building relationships with adults and peers. Relationships are characterized by emotional instability, instability, the manifestation of childishness in activity and behavior (GV Gribanova).

Other possible causes of childbirth can be pedagogical neglect. The category of pedagogically neglected children is also heterogeneous. Neglect may be due to various specific causes and may take various forms. In the psychological and pedagogical literature, the term “pedagogical neglect” is most often used in a narrower sense; it is considered only as one of the reasons for school failure.

In connection with the emergence in the system of general education and special schools of the middle and senior classes for children with CRA, there is a need to study the characteristics of adolescence. So, on the basis of the conducted research, two groups of adolescents with CRA are distinguished, each of which has its own specifics: adolescents with CRA without deviations in behavior; adolescents with CRA with deviations in behavior.

In the socio-psychological studies conducted a study of the role of socio-psychological factors in the development of children with CRA. The works concerned the analysis of the influence of family, social status, educational level of parents and the nature of relationships in the family. It should be noted that the influence of the family manifests itself at all levels of development of the child’s personality.

In children with mental retardation in the somatic state, there are frequent signs of delayed physical development (muscle underdevelopment, insufficiency of muscle and vascular tone, growth retardation), the formation of walking, speech, neatness skills, stages of play activity. In these children, features of the emotional-volitional sphere (its immaturity) and persistent disturbances in cognitive activity are noted.

Emotional-volitional immaturity is represented by organic infantilism. Children with mental retardation do not have the typical for a healthy child liveliness and brightness of emotions, characterized by weak will and weak interest in the assessment of their activities. The game is characterized by poverty of imagination and creativity, monotony, monotony. These children have low working capacity as a result of increased exhaustion.

In cognitive activity are observed: poor memory, instability of attention, slowness of mental processes and their reduced switchability. For a child with CRA, a longer period is necessary for the reception and processing of visual, auditory and other impressions.

For children with CRA, there is a limited (much poorer than in normally developing children of the same age) reserve of general information about the environment, insufficiently formed spatial and temporal ideas, poor vocabulary, lack of formation of intellectual activity skills.

The immaturity of the functional state of the central nervous system is one of the reasons that children with CRA are not ready for school by the age of 7 years. By this time, as a rule, they have not formed the basic mental operations, they do not know how to orient in tasks, do not plan their activities. Such a child hardly masters the skills of reading and writing, often mixes letters that are similar in style, and has difficulty in writing the text independently. In the conditions of mass school, children with CRA, naturally, fall into the category of consistently poor students, which further traumatizes their psyche and causes a negative attitude towards learning. This in some cases leads to conflict between the school and the child’s family. In this situation, it is especially important to send a child with such problems on time to the psychological, medical and pedagogical commission in order to conduct a qualified diagnosis.

Hthe most prominent featurechildren with CRA  (unlike normally developing children and from children with mental retardation) - the discrepancy between the level is clear- effective operations and verbal thinking. All tasks that require the involvement of logical thinking and explanation, they performed much worse than normally developing children. When performing the same task on a visual model, the quality of its performance improves, and a child with CRA shows a higher level of mental activity than a child with mental retardation. For example, when fulfilling a classification task, having correctly grouped objects by gender, they often cannot call this group an appropriate concept, cannot explain the principle by which they were combined. The following fact is very indicative of a child with CRA, both from normally developing and mentally retarded children. Completing the “4th Extra” task often causes difficulties for a child with CRA. But the introduction of additional objects (not “4 superfluous”, but “6th superfluous”) helps to correctly identify the object that is not suitable for the rest of the group and explain the principle by which this selection occurs.

In contrast to mentally retarded children, children with CRA have a higher learning ability. They are better use help  teacher or senior and able to apply the shown method of action when performing similar tasks. Therefore, for the correct diagnosis, it is very important to conduct a survey of a child with suspected RR in the form of a learning experiment.

An important task in the development of the problem of CRA is knowledge of its causal relationships. The causes of the development of mental retardation are diverse, therefore, the group of children with mental retardation is extremely heterogeneous. For some of them, the slowdown in the development of emotional development and the arbitrary regulation of behavior comes to the fore, violations in the intellectual sphere are not pronounced. In other forms of mental retardation, the underdevelopment of various aspects of cognitive activity prevails.

The concepts of "factor" and "cause" are ambiguous. No isolated factor in itself can be the cause. Any state change is determined by “internal moments” —the attitude of the organism (individual) to the pathogenic factor (G. E. Sukharev). Not every negative experience should be qualified as a factor that forms CRA, since the degree of significance of a factor depends on the intrapsychic features of the personality of the child and his family.

After analyzing the multiplicity of approaches in studying the causes of CRA, the complexity of the mechanism of its formation becomes apparent. Specific manifestations of PD in a child depend on the causes and time of its occurrence, the degree of deformation of the affected function, its value in the general system of mental development.

Thus, it is possible to identify the following most important groups of reasons that may lead to the CRA:

1) the causes of a biological nature that impede the normal and timely maturation of the brain;

2) the general lack of communication with others, causing a delay in the child's assimilation of social experience;

3) the absence of a full-fledged, age-appropriate activity, which gives the child the opportunity to “appropriate” public experience, the timely formation of internal mental actions;

4) social deprivation that impedes timely mental development.

From the above classification, it can be seen that three groups of reasons for the CRA out of four have a pronounced socio-psychological character. The child's CRA may be due to the action of both a single adverse factor and a combination of factors emerging in the process of interaction.

The interdependence of social and biological causes of CRA is considered as the basic basis for the study. The systems approach helps to overcome the disconnection that still exists to some extent in medical and psychological research, isolating any one of the many aspects of the problem.

In the framework of the traditional medical approach to the study of children with CRA, priority is usually given to biological factors that form the above condition. It is known that the ratio of social and biological factors in the formation of CRA varies with the age of the child. In favorable conditions, the development of the child, due to the adverse effects of biological factors, eventually approaches the age norm, while development, which is also aggravated by social factors, regresses.

The following groups of socio-psychological factors can be distinguished:

1) subjective (diverse, but necessarily super significant for the development of the child);

2) superstrong, acute, sudden (stressful);

3) psychogenic traumas underlying post-traumatic disorders;

4) psychogenic factors combined with deprivation (emotional or sensory);

5) psychogenic injuries during periods of age-related crises (asthenia, crisis psychological complexes);

6) social and psychological factors associated with improper upbringing;

7) chronic mental trauma (unfavorable family, closed childcare facilities).

The time of occurrence of CRA is associated, as a rule, with early age stages, and the age factor can rather change the character and dynamics of CUR, aggravating or, conversely, softening its manifestation.

The family factor, which essentially combines biological and psychological determinants, is considered as the main factor in the formation of CRA in the domestic psychological literature (MI Buyanov, KS Lebedinskaya). Thus, a significant proportion of children with CRA are brought up by parents with certain mental disorders. In addition, relationships in such families are characterized by high conflict, emotional instability, anarchic education.

In practical psychology, the fact of the appearance of mental retardation is often associated with the negative impact of schools, teachers, and the concept of psychological neglect is introduced. The main psychotraumatic factor is the system of education itself (I.V. Dubrovina). Any pedagogical impact that does not take into account the individual characteristics of the child’s personality can be a direct cause of CRA. Practice shows that often poor student performance is identified with a delay in his mental development. As a result of the deformed pedagogical impact, the state of mental retardation arises, therefore the role of the “school factor” cannot be ignored.

According to the studies of TA Vlasova, the resistance of the SPD depends, firstly, on the period of influence of the determining factor and, secondly, on its quality characteristics. These data must be considered when determining the priorities for the formation of the CRA.

A particular issue in the problem of CRA, noted by TA Vlassova, is the prognostic heterogeneity. Experimental data distinguish the following prediction options:

1) gradual improvement in development;

2) the same dynamics, interrupted by age crises;

3) the development of persistent non-coarse defect;

4) regression of the formation of the state.

Each variant of the forecast is determined by the intensity and duration of the impact of formative factors. Children with CRA constitute a heterogeneous group in terms of their psycho-physiological development. In the examined children with CRA, the following syndromes, as a rule, appear:

1) attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD);

2) mental infantilism syndrome;

3) cerebrastenic syndrome;

4) psychoorganic syndrome.

These syndromes can occur both in isolation and in different combinations.

2.2   Features of the psyche of children with CRA

The features of the clinical-psychological picture of organic infantilism are largely associated with the prevailing mood background. In children with elevated euphoric mood, impulsivity and psychomotor disinhibition dominate, externally imitating children's cheerfulness and spontaneity. Characterized by the inability to volitional effort and systematic activity. In the classroom, these children are restless, do not obey the requirements of the discipline, in response to comments, they promise to correct, but then they forget about it. In a conversation, they openly and easily express a negative attitude toward learning, without being embarrassed, they say that it is uninteresting to study and it is difficult that they wanted to walk or play.

For children with a predominance of low mood characterized by a tendency to timidity, fear fear. This emotional background, as well as always accompanying cerebrosthenic disorders, impede the formation of activity, initiative, and independence. And these children are dominated by gaming interests. They hardly get used to the school and the children's team, however, in the lessons they behave more correctly. Therefore, they attack a doctor not due to misconduct, but because of learning difficulties. Often they are hard going through school failure. The arising neurotic formations even more inhibit the development of their independence, activity and personality in general.

2.3 Psychological and pedagogical features of correctional and developmental education for children with mental retardation

The problem of helping children with learning difficulties teachers have been involved for many decades. The classes of leveling, compensating training, correction, pedagogical support, adaptation, health, etc. - all these organizational forms testify to the search for conditions adequate to the mental and physical abilities of students. Note that these forms, in addition to the alignment classes, were created mainly at the second grade level, starting from the fifth grade.

Taken in 1991-1993 surveys of teachers working in classes of compensatory education showed that teachers are not satisfied with their work: they do not know the psychological characteristics of children; only medical diagnostics do not help them understand the reasons for failure and choose the appropriate methods of work; there are no special techniques, new technologies, and successful finds, as a rule, are little introduced into school practice. Changes in the field of education related to the new priorities of social development of society also had consequences: as a result of an objectively positive factor - the development of gymnasiums and lyceums - the outflow of the most capable schoolchildren to these educational institutions occurs. At the same time, there is an influx of students with problems of mental development (mainly intellectual and speech) to the mass school, as a result of which it has become a multifunctional: teaching, educating, developing (traditional functions) and psychocorrectional, wellness (completely new functions).

Timely identification of the reasons that lead to student failure and maladaptation, and the introduction of innovative learning technologies can improve the learning environment for children in the category in question. This, in turn, will reduce the possibility of a child having neuropsychiatric, psychosomatic disorders, as consequences of negative emotions, and various forms of deviant behavior, which are a kind of inadequate compensation for academic failure.

Today, the successful functioning of secondary schools and any educational institution becomes unthinkable without qualified correctional developmental workbased on the results of complex agnostic and new scientifically based organizational methodological forms of activity.

The system of correctional and developmental education - a form of differentiation of education, allowing to solve problems modern active assistance to children with learning difficulties and in adapting to school.

This form of differentiation is possible with the usual traditional organization of the educational process, but is more effective at creating special classes of correctional and developmental education. The latter provide optimal pedagogical conditions for children with learning difficulties and problems in somatic and neuropsychic health. It is precisely these classes that can enable consistent interaction of diagnostic and advisory, correctional, developmental, educational and preventive, and social and labor activities.

And in conclusion, it should be noted that a child with such a pathology often needs the help of an adult when performing tasks. If the parents themselves cannot provide such assistance, it is advisable to place the child in a special institution, where he will be provided with the necessary qualified assistance, or invite a defectologist for home schooling.

Thus, the analysis of this study showed that the structure of mental retardation in the older preschool age is determined by the insufficient formation of the motivational side of mental activity, the insufficient formation of mental operations, the difficulties in shaping the leading age activity, the uneven formation of cognitive processes, namely, logical memorization, verbal-logical thinking, space-time representations, active attention function.

Children with SPD can be taught in general-purpose schools, but the teacher should be well aware of their features in order to implement an individual approach to these children. Children with a pronounced mental retardation, as a rule, should attend special groups at kindergartens and study in special schools. Leveling classes are organized for them at general schools.

The work on teaching literacy to children with mental retardation is carried out systematically, in stages, and involves the use of a whole complex of didactic material that is used in various forms of children's organization: frontal, differentiated, and individual tasks. Its systematic use and well-thought-out method of work provides an opportunity for a better mastering of educational material, the development of oral speech, the formation of interest in educational activities in general, and the development of the foundations of literacy.

Listused literature

1. Kostenkova Yu.A. Children with mental retardation: features of speech, writing, reading / Yu.A. Kostenkova, R. D. Triger, S. G. Shevchenko. - M .: School Press, 2004. - 64 p.

2. Lebedinskaya K.S. Selection of children in a special school: Teacher’s Guide / Comp. T.A.Vlasova, K.S. Lebedinskaya, V.F.Machikhina. - M .: Education, 1983. - P.47-51, 53, 8-14.

3. Markovskaya I.F. Impaired mental function. Clinical and neuropsychological diagnostics / I.F. Markovskaya. - M .: Medicine, 1993. - 337 p.

4. Education of children with CRA (manual for teachers) / Ed. V.I.Lubovskogo. - Smolensk: Pedagogy, 1994. - 110 p.

5. Friday T.V. Speech therapy in tables and diagrams / T.V.Piatnitsa. - Minsk: Aversev, 2006. - 173 p.

6. Fadina G.V. Diagnosis and correction of mental retardation in children of senior preschool age: A teaching aid / GVFadina. - Balashov: “Nikolaev”, 2004. - 68 p.

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Clinical and psychological-pedagogical characteristics of children with mental retardation. Psychological features of their communication. Analysis of sociometric techniques and conducting with them the research of interpersonal relations in adolescents with CRA.

thesis, added 10/08/2010


Clinical, psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with mental retardation, especially their speech development. Psychophysiological processes of reading. Dyslexia, its causes, mechanisms and types. Features of the formation of reading skills in children.

thesis, added on 07/16/2013


Patterns of anomalies of the development of the psyche. General characteristics of children with mental retardation, in particular pre-school age. Analysis of general and special psychological, pedagogical and methodological literature on mental retardation.

term paper added on 10/23/2009


Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with mental retardation, especially the use of didactic games for the correction of their memory. The work of the educational psychologist in this field, its practical testing and evaluation of effectiveness in school.

term paper, added 01/17/2011


Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children of primary school age with mental retardation. Analysis of the patterns of formation of self-esteem in childhood. Features of the correction of self-esteem of students with mental retardation.

term paper added on 06/20/2014


The study by domestic and foreign scientists of the characteristics and problems of children with mental retardation (CRA). Characteristics of clinical variants of CRA. Psychological methods and technology for diagnosing the level of learning and thinking of a child with CRA.

abstract, added 10/22/2012


Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of preschool children with mental retardation. Diagnosis of mental retardation. Cognitive development in preschool children. Perception, thinking, attention and memory of a preschooler.

term paper, added on 10.11.2013


Overview of the formation of the mathematical representations of a preschooler child with intellectual disabilities. The study of psychological and pedagogical features of the development of children with mental retardation. The use of didactic games in the learning process.

MUNICIPAL PRESCHOOL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

"KINDERGARTEN OF COMBINED VIEW №61"

CONSULTATION

TEACHERS AND PARENTS

Topic: "Features of the development of children

with mental retardation "

spent:

teacher defectologist:

Kodintsev

Julia Olegovna

Khotkovo 2011

Impaired mental function

1. Introduction.

2. The causes of CRA

3. Features of memory, attention, perception, with mental retardation

The specific features of the memory of children with CRA

Attention

Causes of disturbed attention.

Perception

Causes of impaired perception in children with CRA

4. Features of mental activity of children with CRA.

General weaknesses of mental activity of children with CRA

5. Features speech processes  at ZPR

Causes of speech disorders

6. Features of the emotional development of children with CRA

4. Conclusion

Introduction

The study of patterns of developmental abnormalities of the psyche is a necessary task not only of pathopsychology, but also of defectology and child psychiatry, it is the search for these patterns, the study of the causes and mechanisms of the formation of a mental development defect in a timely manner to diagnose disorders and look for ways to correct them.

The spectrum of mental impairment in children is quite wide, but mental retardation is much more common.

Mental retardation (MAD) 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, is often detected when enrolled in school and is expressed in the insufficiency of the general knowledge, limited ideas, immaturity of thinking, low intellectual focus, the predominance of gaming interests, rapid glut in intellectual activities

The causes of CRA can be divided into two large groups:

1. Causes of a biological nature;

2. The causes of social - psychological nature.

For reasons of a biological nature include:

1) various options for the pathology of pregnancy (severe intoxication, Rh - conflict, etc.);

2) prematurity of the child;

3) birth trauma;

4) various somatic diseases (severe forms of influenza, rickets, chronic diseases - defects of internal organs, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal absorption disorder syndrome, etc.)

5) mild brain injury.

Among reasons of social and psychological nature  distinguish the following:

1) early separation of the child from the mother and upbringing in complete isolation in conditions of social deprivation;

2) lack of full-fledged, age-appropriate activities: subject, play, communication with adults, etc.

3) distorted conditions for the upbringing of a child in a family (hypopec, hyper-care) or the authoritarian type of upbringing.

The basis of the CRA is the interaction of biological and social causes.

When systematics ZPR and there are two main forms:

1. Infantilism - violation of the rate of maturation of the most emerging brain systems. Infantilism can be harmonic (associated with a violation of the functional nature, the immaturity of the frontal structures) and disharmonious (due to the phenomena of organic brain);

2. Asthenia - a sharp weakening of the somatic and neurological nature, due to functional and dynamic disorders of the central nervous system. Asthenia can be somatic and cerebral – atenic (increased exhaustion of the nervous system).

The classification of the main types of CRA is based on the Vlasov-Pevsner classification, based on the etiological principle:

DSS of constitutional nature (the cause of occurrence is not the maturation of the frontal regions of the brain). These include children with uncomplicated harmonic infantilism, they retain the features of a younger age, they have a predominant game interest, does not develop learning. These children, under favorable conditions, show good leveling results.

The somatogenous origin of somatogenous origin (the reason - the transfer of a child's somatic illness). This group includes children with somatic asthenia, signs of which are exhaustion, weakness of the body, reduced stamina, lethargy, instability of mood, etc.

CRA of psychogenic origin (the reason is unfavorable conditions in the family, distorted conditions for the upbringing of the child (hyper care, hypopec), etc.)

CRA cerebral asthenic genesis. (cause - brain dysfunction). This group includes children with cerebral asthenia - increased exhaustion of the nervous system. In children, there are: neurosis-like phenomena; increased psychomotor irritability; affective mood disorders, apatic-dynamic disorder - decrease in nutritional activity, general lethargy, motor disinhibition.

There is a specific combination of immaturity of the emotional and intellectual sphere in the clinical and psychological structure of each of the above variants of mental retardation.

Features of memory, attention, perception

with mental retardation

Memory:

Insufficient formation of cognitive processes is often the main cause of difficulties encountered in children with CRA in school. Numerous clinical and psychological-pedagogical studies show that a significant place in the structure of a mental disorder in this developmental anomaly belongs to memory impairment.

Observations of teachers and parents of children with CRA, as well as special psychological studies indicate deficiencies in the development of their involuntary memory. Much of what normally developing children remember easily, as if by itself, causes considerable effort from their lagging peers and requires specially organized work with them.

One of the main reasons for the lack of productivity of involuntary memory in children with CRA is a decrease in their cognitive activity. In the study

(1969) this problem was subjected to special study. One of the experimental methods used in the work involved the use of a task, the purpose of which was to arrange pictures with images of objects into groups in accordance with the initial letter of the name of these objects. It was revealed that children with delayed development not only reproduced verbal material worse, but also spent much more time on recalling it than their normally developing peers. The main difference was not so much in the extraordinary productivity of the answers, as in a different attitude to the goal. Children with CRA, on their own, almost did not make any attempts to achieve a more complete recall, and rarely used auxiliary techniques for this. In those cases when it did occur, there was often a substitution of the goal of the action. The auxiliary method was used not for remembering the right words starting with a specific letter, but for inventing new (extraneous) words for the same letter. The study studied the dependence of the productivity of involuntary memorization on the nature of the material and the characteristics of activities with it in younger students with CRA. The subjects had to establish semantic connections between the units of the main and additional sets of words and pictures (in different combinations). Children with CRA found difficulties in assimilating instructions for series requiring independent selection of nouns that fit the meaning of the pictures or words presented by the experimenter. Many children did not understand the task, but sought to quickly obtain experimental material and begin to act. At the same time, they, unlike normally developing preschoolers, could not adequately assess their capabilities and were sure that they know how to carry out the task. There were clear differences in both productivity and accuracy and stability of involuntary memorization. The amount of correctly reproduced material was normally 1.2 times higher.

notes that visual material is remembered better than verbal and in the process of reproduction is a more effective support. The author points out that involuntary memory in children with CRA does not suffer to the same extent as it is arbitrary; therefore, it is advisable to use it extensively in their learning.

They point to a decrease in voluntary memory in students with mental retardation as one of the main reasons for their difficulties in schooling. These children do not remember the texts, the multiplication table, they do not keep in mind the purpose and conditions of the problem. They are characterized by fluctuations in the productivity of memory, the rapid forgetting of the learned.

The specific features of the memory of children with CRA:

Reduced memory and memorization speed;

Involuntary memorization is less productive than normal;

The memory mechanism is characterized by a decrease in the productivity of the first memorization attempts, but the time required for complete memorization is close to normal;

The predominance of visual memory over verbal;

Decrease in random memory;

Violation of mechanical memory.

Attention:

Causes of disturbed attention:

1. The asthenic phenomena present in the child have their effect.

2. Unformed mechanism of arbitrariness in children.

3. Unformed motivation, the child shows a good concentration of attention, when it is interesting, and where it is required to show another level of motivation - a violation of interest.

Researcher children with CRA notes the following features of attention characteristic of this violation: low concentration of attention: the inability of the child to concentrate on the task, on any activity, rapid distractibility.

The study clearly showed features of attention in children.

with CRA: in the process of performing the whole experimental task, cases were observed

Attentional fluctuations, a large number of distractions,

Rapid exhaustion and fatigue.

Low sustainability of attention. Children cannot do the same thing for a long time.

Narrow amount of attention.

Arbitrary attention is more disturbed. In remedial work with these children, it is necessary to attach great importance to the development of voluntary attention. To do this, use special games and exercises ("Who is more careful?", "What was not on the table?" And so on). In the process of individual work, apply such techniques as: drawing flags, houses, work on the model, etc.

Perception:

Causes of impaired perception in children with CRA:

1. When DRA impaired the integrative activity of the cerebral cortex, the cerebral hemispheres and, as a result, the coordinated work of various analyzer systems is disturbed: hearing, vision, motor system, which leads to disruption of the systemic mechanisms of perception.

Lack of attention in children with CRA.

Underdevelopment of research orientation in the first years of life and, as a result, the child does not receive the full practical experience necessary for the development of his perception.

Features of perception:

The lack of completeness and accuracy of perception is associated with impaired attention, mechanisms of arbitrariness.

Insufficient focus and organization of attention.

Slowness of perception and processing of information for full perception. A child with CRA needs more time than a normal child.

Low level of analytical perception. The child does not consider the information that he perceives (“I see, but I do not think.”).

Decreased activity of perception. In the process of perception, the search function is broken, the child does not try to peer, the material is perceived superficially.

More complex forms of perception, which require the participation of several analyzers and have a complex nature — visual perception, hand-eye coordination, are most grossly violated.

The task of the defectologist is to help the child with CRA to streamline the processes of perception and to teach to reproduce the object purposefully. In the first academic year of study, an adult directs the perception of a child in a class; at a later age, children are offered a plan of their actions. For the development of perception of the material offered to children in the form of schemes, colored chips.

Features of the development of mental processes in children with CRA

This problem has been studied, and others. Thinking in children with CRA is more secure than that of mentally retarded children, the ability to generalize, abstract, accept help, and transfer skills to other situations is more preserved.

The development of thinking is influenced by all mental processes:

The level of development of attention;

The level of development of perceptions and ideas about the world (the richer the experience, the more complex conclusions a child can make).

The level of speech development;

The level of formation of arbitrariness mechanisms (regulatory mechanisms). The older the child, the more difficult it can solve.

By 6-7 years old, preschoolers are able to perform complex intellectual tasks, even if they are not interested in him (the principle: “this is necessary” and independence).

In children with CRA, all these prerequisites for the development of thinking are to some extent violated. Children hardly concentrate on the task. These children have impaired perception, they have rather poor experience in their arsenal - all this determines the peculiarities of a child’s thinking with mental retardation.

The side of the cognitive processes that is disturbed in a child is connected with the violation of one of the components of thinking.

Children with CRA suffer from coherent speech, impaired ability to plan their activities using speech; the inner speech is broken - an active means of logical thinking of the child.

General disadvantages of mental activity of children with CRA:

Unformed cognitive, search motivation (a kind of attitude to any intellectual tasks). Children tend to avoid any intellectual effort. The moment of overcoming difficulties is unattractive for them (refusal to perform a difficult task, replacing an intellectual task with a closer one, a game task.). Such a child does not complete the task, but its simpler part. Children are not interested in the result of the assignment. This feature of thinking is manifested in school, when children very quickly lose interest in new subjects.

The absence of a pronounced approximate stage in solving mental problems. Children with CRA begin to act immediately, on the move. This position was confirmed in the experiment. When presenting instructions for the assignment, many children did not understand the assignment, but sought to quickly obtain experimental material and begin to act. It should be noted that children with CRA are more interested in finishing work quickly, and not in the quality of the task. The child does not know how to analyze the conditions, does not understand the significance of the orienting stage, which leads to the appearance of a multitude of errors. When a child begins to learn, it is very important to create conditions for him to initially think, analyze the task.

Low mental activity, “thoughtless” work style (children, because of haste, lack of organization, act at random, not taking into account the full condition of the given condition; there is no directed search for a solution, overcoming difficulties). Children solve the problem on an intuitive level, that is, the child seems to be giving the right answer, but cannot explain it. The stereotype of thinking, its stereotyped.

Visual and imaginative thinking. Children with CRA find it difficult to act on a visual model due to violations of the operations of analysis, violation of integrity, purposefulness, activity of perception - all this leads to the fact that the child finds it difficult to analyze the sample, identify the main parts, establish the relationship between the parts and reproduce this structure in the process of activities.

Logical thinking. Children with mental retardation have violations of the most important mental operations, which serve as components of logical thinking:

Analysis (addicted to small details, can not highlight the main thing, emit insignificant signs);

Comparison (compare objects for incomparable, non-essential features);

Classification (the child often classifies correctly, but cannot realize its principle, cannot explain why he did this).

In all children with CRA, the level of logical thinking lags significantly behind the level of a normal student. By the age of 6-7, children with normal mental development begin to reason, draw independent conclusions, try to explain everything.

Children independently master two types of inference:

Induction (the child is able to make a general conclusion by means of particular facts, that is, from the particular to the general).

Deduction (from general to particular).

Children with CRA experience very great difficulties in building the simplest conclusions. The stage in the development of logical thinking - the implementation of the conclusion of the two premises - is still not very accessible to children with CRA. In order for children to be able to conclude, they are greatly assisted by an adult, indicating the direction of thought, highlighting the dependencies between which relationships should be established.

According to the opinion, “children with CRA do not know how to reason, draw conclusions; try to avoid such situations. Because of the lack of formation of logical thinking, these children give random, rash answers, and are incapable of analyzing the conditions of the task. When working with these children, it is necessary to pay special attention to the development of all forms of thinking in them. ”

Special featuresspeech processes   at ZPR

Also, in children with CRA, violations of all aspects of speech activity are detected: the majority of children suffer from sound pronunciation; have limited vocabulary; poorly owned grammatical generalizations.

The impairment of speech during mental retardation has a systemic nature, since there are difficulties in understanding lexical connections, developing the lexical and grammatical structure of speech, phonemic hearing and phonemic perception, and in the formation of coherent speech. These peculiarities of speech lead to difficulties in the process of mastering reading and writing. Studies have shown that under SPD, underdevelopment of speech activity directly affects the level of intellectual development. There are three plans for cognitive prerequisites for the development of speech:

· the level of the child’s intellectual development is reflected in the structure of the semantic field;

· the level of formation of mental operations affects the level of language competence;

· speech activity is correlated with the processes of cognitive activity.

The causes of speech disorders can be various factors or their combination:

· Difficulties in distinguishing sounds by hearing (with normal hearing);

· Damage during labor of the speech zone located on the crown;

· Defects in the structure of the speech organs - lips, teeth, tongue, soft or hard palate. An example would be a short frenulum of the tongue, a cleft of the upper palate, popularly called the "wolf mouth", or an overbite;

· Insufficient mobility of the lips and tongue;

· Illiterate speech in the family, etc.

Features of the emotional development of children with CRA

The emotional state of the child has a special meaning in mental development. Emotions are a special class of mental processes and states that make up the relationship of a person experienced in various forms to objects and the phenomenon of reality. There are significant links between the level of verbal intelligence, attentional instability, focus on learning activities and the emotional-volitional sphere of children with CRA. Underdevelopment of the emotional-volitional sphere manifests itself in the transition of the child from the CRA to systematic learning. In studies, it is noted that children with CRA are characterized primarily by lack of organization, uncriticality, and inadequate self-esteem. The emotions of children with CRA are superficial and unstable, as a result of which children are inspired and prone to imitation.

Typical for children with CRA features in emotional development:

1) the instability of the emotional-volitional sphere, which is manifested in the inability for a long time to concentrate on purposeful activity. The psychological reason for this is the low level of voluntary mental activity;

2) the manifestation of negative characteristics of crisis development, difficulties in establishing communication contacts;

3) the emergence of emotional disorders: children experience fear, anxiety, are prone to affective actions.

Also, children with CRA are inherent in the symptoms of organic infantilism: lack of bright emotions, low level of affective-need sphere, increased fatigue, poverty of mental processes, hyperactivity. Depending on the predominance of the emotional background, two types of organic infantilism can be distinguished: unstable — psychomotor disinhibition, impulsivity, inability to self-regulate activity and behavior, inhibitory — characterized by a predominance of lowered background mood.

Children with CRA are distinguished by lack of independence and directness; they do not know how to carry out tasks on purpose, to control their work. And as a result, their activity is characterized by low productivity of work in terms of learning activities, instability of attention with low performance and low cognitive activity, but when switching to a game corresponding to emotional needs, productivity increases.

In children with mental retardation, the immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere is one of the factors inhibiting the development of cognitive activity due to the unformed motivational sphere and the low level of control.

Children with CRA experience difficulties of active adaptation, which prevents their emotional comfort and balance of nervous processes: inhibition and arousal. Emotional discomfort reduces the activity of cognitive activity, leads to stereotypical actions. Changes in the emotional state and after this cognitive activity proves the unity of emotions and intellect.

Thus, a number of essential features characteristic of the emotional development of children with CRA can be distinguished: the immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere, organic infantilism, lack of coordination of emotional processes, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and aptitude for affective outbursts.

The study of the peculiarities of the development of the intellectual and emotional sphere made it possible to see that the symptoms of mental retardation are very sharply manifested in the older preschool years, when children are assigned educational tasks.

CONCLUSION

The delay of mental development is manifested in the slow pace of maturation of the emotional and volitional sphere, and in intellectual insufficiency.

The latter is manifested in the fact that the child’s intellectual abilities are not age appropriate. Significant lag and originality is found in mental activity. All children with CRA 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 the peculiarities of memory are most clearly manifested in the process of solving problems associated with such components of mental activity as analysis, synthesis, synthesis and abstraction.

Given all the above, these children need a special approach.

Requirements for training, taking into account the characteristics of children with CRA:

Observance of certain hygienic requirements when organizing classes, that is, classes are held in a well-ventilated area, attention is drawn to the level of illumination and the placement of children in the classroom.

Careful selection of visual material for classes and its placement so that the extra material does not distract the attention of the child.

Control over the organization of the activities of children in the classroom: it is important to think about the possibility of changing the class of one activity to others, to include physical exercises in the lesson plan.

The defectologist should monitor the reaction, the behavior of each child and apply an individual approach.

References:

and About children with developmental disabilities. M.1985

Children with CRA / ed. M., 1983

Lebedinsky mental development in children. M., 1984

and others. Mental development of children with mental disability M., 1985

Poddubnaya processes of involuntary memory in first-graders with CRA // Defectology, № 4, 1980

Strekalov logical thinking in preschoolers with CRA // Defectology, № 4, 1982

Ul'enkova children with CRA. M., 1990

Reader: children with developmental disorders / comp. 1995

  "" Violations of mental development in children "" M, 1984.

About children with developmental disabilities. M., 1973

Children with CRA / ed. m 1984

Poddubnaya processes of involuntary memory in first-graders with CRA // Defectology, №4, 1980

Poddubnaya processes of involuntary memory in first-graders with CRA // Defectology, №4. 1980

Strekalov visual thinking in preschoolers with CRA // Defectology, №1, 1987

Strekalov logical thinking preschooler with CRA // Defectology, № 4, 1982

Ul'enkova children with CRA. M., Pedagogy, 1990

MUNICIPAL PRESCHOOL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

"KINDERGARTEN OF COMBINED VIEW №61"

CONSULTATION

for

TEACHERS AND PARENTS

Topic: "Features of the development of children

with mental retardation "

spent:

teacher defectologist:

Kodintsev

Julia Olegovna
Khotkovo 2011

Impaired mental function

PLAN:

1. 
   Introduction
2. 
     The causes of CRA
3. 
   Features of memory, attention, perception, with mental retardation

Memory

- specific features of the memory of children with CRA

Attention

- causes of disturbed attention.

Perception

- causes of impaired perception in children with CRA

4. Features of mental activity of children with CRA.

- common defects of mental activity of children with CRA

5. Features speech processes  at ZPR

- causes of speech disorders

6. Features of the emotional development of children with CRA

4. Conclusion

Introduction
  The study of patterns of developmental abnormalities of the psyche is a necessary task not only of pathopsychology, but also of defectology and child psychiatry, it is the search for these patterns, the study of the causes and mechanisms of the formation of a mental development defect in a timely manner to diagnose disorders and look for ways to correct them.

The spectrum of mental impairment in children is quite wide, but mental retardation is much more common.

  Mental retardation (MAD) 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, is often detected when enrolled in school and is expressed in the insufficiency of the general knowledge, limited ideas, immaturity of thinking, low intellectual focus, the predominance of gaming interests, rapid glut in intellectual activities

  The causes of CRA can be divided into two large groups:

1. Causes of a biological nature;

2. The causes of social - psychological nature.

For reasons of a biological nature include:

1) various options for the pathology of pregnancy (severe intoxication, rhesus, conflict, etc.);

2) prematurity of the child;

3) birth trauma;

4) various somatic diseases (severe flu, rickets, chronic diseases - defects of internal organs, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal absorption disorder syndrome, etc.)

5) mild brain injury.

Amongreasons of social and psychological nature   distinguish the following:

1) early separation of the child from the mother and upbringing in complete isolation in conditions of social deprivation;

2) lack of full-fledged, age-appropriate activities: subject, play, communication with adults, etc.

3) distorted conditions for the upbringing of a child in a family (hypopec, hyper-care) or the authoritarian type of upbringing.

The basis of the CRA is the interaction of biological and social causes.

When systematics ZPR Vlasov TA and Pevzner MS There are two main forms:

1. Infantilism - violation of the rate of maturation of the most emerging brain systems. Infantilism can be harmonic (associated with a violation of the functional nature, the immaturity of the frontal structures) and disharmonious (due to the phenomena of organic brain);

2. Asthenia - a sharp weakening of the somatic and neurological nature, due to functional and dynamic disorders of the central nervous system. Asthenia can be somatic and cerebral – atenic (increased exhaustion of the nervous system).

Classification of the main types of CRA according to K.S. Lebedinskaya relies on the Vlasov-Pevzner classification, based on the etiological principle:

  - DSS of a constitutional nature (the cause of occurrence is not the maturation of the frontal brain). These include children with uncomplicated harmonic infantilism, they retain the features of a younger age, they have a predominant game interest, does not develop learning. These children, under favorable conditions, show good leveling results.

  - DG somatogenic origin (the reason - the transfer of a child's somatic illness). This group includes children with somatic asthenia, signs of which are exhaustion, weakness of the body, reduced stamina, lethargy, instability of mood, etc.

- CRA of psychogenic origin (the reason is unfavorable conditions in the family, distorted conditions for the upbringing of the child (hyper-care, hypoec), etc.)

- CRA cerebral asthenic genesis. (cause - brain dysfunction). This group includes children with cerebral asthenia - increased exhaustion of the nervous system. In children, there are: neurosis-like phenomena; increased psychomotor irritability; affective mood disorders, apatic-dynamic disorder - decrease in nutritional activity, general lethargy, motor disinhibition.

There is a specific combination of immaturity of the emotional and intellectual sphere in the clinical and psychological structure of each of the above variants of mental retardation.
Features of memory, attention, perception

with mental retardation
Memory:

Insufficient formation of cognitive processes is often the main cause of difficulties encountered in children with CRA in school. Numerous clinical and psychological-pedagogical studies show that a significant place in the structure of a mental disorder in this developmental anomaly belongs to memory impairment.

Observations of teachers and parents of children with CRA, as well as special psychological studies indicate deficiencies in the development of their involuntary memory. Much of what normally developing children remember easily, as if by itself, causes considerable effort from their lagging peers and requires specially organized work with them.

One of the main reasons for the lack of productivity of involuntary memory in children with CRA is a decrease in their cognitive activity. In the study

T.V. Egorova (1969), this problem was subjected to special study. One of the experimental methods used in the work involved the use of a task, the purpose of which was to arrange pictures with images of objects into groups in accordance with the initial letter of the name of these objects. It was revealed that children with delayed development not only reproduced verbal material worse, but also spent much more time on recalling it than their normally developing peers. The main difference was not so much in the extraordinary productivity of the answers, as in a different attitude to the goal. Children with CRA, on their own, almost did not make any attempts to achieve a more complete recall, and rarely used auxiliary techniques for this. In those cases when it did occur, there was often a substitution of the goal of the action. The auxiliary method was used not for remembering the right words starting with a specific letter, but for inventing new (extraneous) words for the same letter. In the study of N.G. Poddubna studied the dependence of the productivity of involuntary memorization on the nature of the material and the characteristics of activities with it in younger schoolchildren with CRA. The subjects had to establish semantic connections between the units of the main and additional sets of words and pictures (in different combinations). Children with CRA found difficulties in assimilating instructions for series requiring independent selection of nouns that fit the meaning of the pictures or words presented by the experimenter. Many children did not understand the task, but sought to quickly obtain experimental material and begin to act. At the same time, they, unlike normally developing preschoolers, could not adequately assess their capabilities and were sure that they know how to carry out the task. There were clear differences in both productivity and accuracy and stability of involuntary memorization. The amount of correctly reproduced material was normally 1.2 times higher.

  N.G. Poddubnaya notes that visual material is remembered better than verbal and in the process of reproduction is a more effective support. The author points out that involuntary memory in children with CRA does not suffer to the same extent as it is arbitrary; therefore, it is advisable to use it extensively in their learning.

T.A. Vlasova, M.S. Pevzner point to a decrease in the voluntary memory of students with mental retardation as one of the main reasons for their difficulties in schooling. These children do not remember the texts, the multiplication table, they do not keep in mind the purpose and conditions of the problem. They are characterized by fluctuations in the productivity of memory, the rapid forgetting of the learned.
The specific features of the memory of children with CRA:
- Reduced memory and memorization speed;

- involuntary memorization is less productive than normal;

- the memory mechanism is characterized by a decrease in the productivity of the first memorization attempts, but the time required for complete memorization is close to normal;

- the predominance of visual memory over verbal;

- reduction of random memory;

- violation of mechanical memory.
Attention:

Causes of disturbed attention:
1. The asthenic phenomena present in the child have their effect.

2. Unformed mechanism of arbitrariness in children.

3. Unformed motivation, the child shows a good concentration of attention, when it is interesting, and where it is required to show another level of motivation - a violation of interest.

Researcher children with CRA Zharenkova L.M. notes the following features of attention characteristic of this disorder: low concentration of attention: the inability of the child to concentrate on the task, on any activity, rapid distractibility.

In the study of N.G. Poddubnaya clearly showed features of attention in children

with CRA: in the process of performing the whole experimental task, cases were observed

- fluctuations of attention, a large number of distractions,

- rapid exhaustion and fatigue.

- low level of sustainability of attention. Children cannot do the same thing for a long time.

- narrow amount of attention.

- voluntary attention is more severely disturbed. In remedial work with these children, it is necessary to attach great importance to the development of voluntary attention. To do this, use special games and exercises ("Who is more careful?", "What was not on the table?" And so on). In the process of individual work, apply such techniques as: drawing flags, houses, working on a pattern, etc.
Perception:
Causes of impaired perception in children with CRA:
1. When DRA impaired the integrative activity of the cerebral cortex, the cerebral hemispheres and, as a result, the coordinated work of various analyzer systems is disturbed: hearing, vision, motor system, which leads to disruption of the systemic mechanisms of perception.

Lack of attention in children with CRA.

Underdevelopment of research orientation in the first years of life and, as a result, the child does not receive the full practical experience necessary for the development of his perception.
Features of perception:
The lack of completeness and accuracy of perception is associated with impaired attention, mechanisms of arbitrariness.

Insufficient focus and organization of attention.

Slowness of perception and processing of information for full perception. A child with CRA needs more time than a normal child.

Low level of analytical perception. The child does not consider the information that he perceives (“I see, but I do not think.”).

Decreased activity of perception. In the process of perception, the search function is broken, the child does not try to peer, the material is perceived superficially.

  More complex forms of perception, which require the participation of several analyzers and have a complex nature — visual perception, hand-eye coordination, are most grossly violated.

The task of the defectologist is to help the child with CRA to streamline the processes of perception and to teach to reproduce the object purposefully. In the first academic year of study, an adult directs the perception of a child in a class; at a later age, children are offered a plan of their actions. For the development of perception of the material offered to children in the form of schemes, colored chips.
Features of the development of mental processes in children with CRA
This problem was studied by V.V. Ul'enkova, T.V. Yegorova, T.A. Strekalov and others. Thinking in children with CRA is more secure than that of mentally retarded children, the ability to generalize, abstract, accept help, and transfer skills to other situations is more preserved.

The development of thinking is influenced by all mental processes:

- the level of development of attention;

- the level of development of perceptions and ideas about the world (the richer the experience, the more complex conclusions a child can make).

- the level of speech development;

- the level of formation of arbitrariness mechanisms (regulatory mechanisms). The older the child, the more difficult it can solve.

By 6-7 years old, preschoolers are able to perform complex intellectual tasks, even if they are not interested in him (the principle: “this is necessary” and independence).

In children with CRA, all these prerequisites for the development of thinking are to some extent violated. Children hardly concentrate on the task. These children have impaired perception, they have rather poor experience in their arsenal - all this determines the peculiarities of a child’s thinking with mental retardation.

The side of the cognitive processes that is disturbed in a child is connected with the violation of one of the components of thinking.

Children with CRA suffer from coherent speech, impaired ability to plan their activities using speech; the inner speech is broken - an active means of logical thinking of the child.

General disadvantages of mental activity of children with CRA:

Unformed cognitive, search motivation (a kind of attitude to any intellectual tasks). Children tend to avoid any intellectual effort. The moment of overcoming difficulties is unattractive for them (refusal to perform a difficult task, replacing an intellectual task with a closer one, a game task.). Such a child does not complete the task, but its simpler part. Children are not interested in the result of the assignment. This feature of thinking is manifested in school, when children very quickly lose interest in new subjects.

The absence of a pronounced approximate stage in solving mental problems. Children with CRA begin to act immediately, on the move. This situation was confirmed in the experiment of N.G. Poddubnaya. When presenting instructions for the assignment, many children did not understand the assignment, but sought to quickly obtain experimental material and begin to act. It should be noted that children with CRA are more interested in finishing work quickly, and not in the quality of the task. The child does not know how to analyze the conditions, does not understand the significance of the orienting stage, which leads to the appearance of a multitude of errors. When a child begins to learn, it is very important to create conditions for him to initially think, analyze the task.

Low mental activity, “thoughtless” work style (children, because of haste, lack of organization, act at random, not taking into account the full condition of the given condition; there is no directed search for a solution, overcoming difficulties). Children solve the problem on an intuitive level, that is, the child seems to be giving the right answer, but cannot explain it. The stereotype of thinking, its stereotyped.

Visual and imaginative thinking. Children with CRA find it difficult to act on a visual model due to violations of the operations of analysis, violation of integrity, purposefulness, activity of perception - all this leads to the fact that the child finds it difficult to analyze the sample, identify the main parts, establish the relationship between the parts and reproduce this structure in the process of activities.

Logical thinking. Children with mental retardation have violations of the most important mental operations, which serve as components of logical thinking:

Analysis (addicted to small details, can not highlight the main thing, emit insignificant signs);

Comparison (compare objects for incomparable, non-essential features);

Classification (the child often classifies correctly, but cannot realize its principle, cannot explain why he did this).

In all children with CRA, the level of logical thinking lags significantly behind the level of a normal student. By the age of 6-7, children with normal mental development begin to reason, draw independent conclusions, try to explain everything.

Children independently master two types of inference:

Induction (the child is able to make a general conclusion by means of particular facts, that is, from the particular to the general).

Deduction (from general to particular).

Children with CRA experience very great difficulties in building the simplest conclusions. The stage in the development of logical thinking - the implementation of the conclusion of the two premises - is still not very accessible to children with CRA. In order for children to be able to conclude, they are greatly assisted by an adult, indicating the direction of thought, highlighting the dependencies between which relationships should be established.

According to U.V. Ul'enkova, “children with CRA do not know how to reason, draw conclusions; try to avoid such situations. Because of the lack of formation of logical thinking, these children give random, rash answers, and are incapable of analyzing the conditions of the task. When working with these children, it is necessary to pay special attention to the development of all forms of thinking in them. ”

Special features speech processes  at ZPR

Also, in children with CRA, violations of all aspects of speech activity are detected: the majority of children suffer from sound pronunciation; have limited vocabulary; poorly owned grammatical generalizations.

Speech impairment in PDD are systemic in nature, since there are difficulties in understanding lexical connections, developing the lexical and grammatical structure of speech, phonemic hearing and phonemic perception, and in the formation of coherent speech. These peculiarities of speech lead to difficulties in the process of mastering reading and writing. Studies conducted by V.V. Voronkova and V.G. Petrova showed that, in the case of CRA, underdevelopment of speech activity directly affects the level of intellectual development. There are three plans for cognitive prerequisites for the development of speech:

• 
  the level of the child’s intellectual development is reflected in the structure of the semantic field;
• 
  the level of formation of mental operations affects the level of language competence;
• 
  speech activity is correlated with the processes of cognitive activity.

The causes of speech disorders can be various factors or their combination:

• 
  difficulties in distinguishing sounds by hearing (with normal hearing);
• 
  damage during labor of the speech zone located on the crown;
• 
  defects in the structure of the speech organs - lips, teeth, tongue, soft or hard palate. An example would be a short frenulum of the tongue, a cleft of the upper palate, popularly called the "wolf mouth", or an overbite;
• 
  insufficient mobility of the lips and tongue;
• 
  illiterate speech in the family, etc.

Features of the emotional development of children with CRA

The emotional state of the child has a special meaning in mental development. Emotions are a special class of mental processes and states that make up the relationship of a person experienced in various forms to objects and the phenomenon of reality. There are significant links between the level of verbal intelligence, attentional instability, focus on learning activities and the emotional-volitional sphere of children with CRA. Underdevelopment of the emotional-volitional sphere manifests itself in the transition of the child from the CRA to systematic learning. In studies of MS Pevzner and T.A. Vlasova notes that children with CRA are characterized primarily by lack of organization, uncriticality, and inadequate self-esteem. The emotions of children with CRA are superficial and unstable, as a result of which children are inspired and prone to imitation.

Typical for children with CRA features in emotional development:

1) the instability of the emotional-volitional sphere, which is manifested in the inability for a long time to concentrate on purposeful activity. The psychological reason for this is the low level of voluntary mental activity;

2) the manifestation of negative characteristics of crisis development, difficulties in establishing communication contacts;

3) the emergence of emotional disorders: children experience fear, anxiety, are prone to affective actions.

Also, children with CRA are inherent in the symptoms of organic infantilism: lack of bright emotions, low level of affective-need sphere, increased fatigue, poverty of mental processes, hyperactivity. Depending on the predominance of the emotional background, two types of organic infantilism can be distinguished: unstable — psychomotor disinhibition, impulsivity, inability to self-regulate activity and behavior, inhibitory — characterized by a predominance of lowered background mood.

Children with CRA are distinguished by lack of independence and directness; they do not know how to carry out tasks on purpose, to control their work. And as a result, their activity is characterized by low productivity of work in terms of learning activities, instability of attention with low performance and low cognitive activity, but when switching to a game corresponding to emotional needs, productivity increases.

In children with mental retardation, the immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere is one of the factors inhibiting the development of cognitive activity due to the unformed motivational sphere and the low level of control.

Children with CRA experience difficulties of active adaptation, which prevents their emotional comfort and balance of nervous processes: inhibition and arousal. Emotional discomfort reduces the activity of cognitive activity, leads to stereotypical actions. Changes in the emotional state and after this cognitive activity proves the unity of emotions and intellect.

Thus, a number of essential features characteristic of the emotional development of children with CRA can be distinguished: the immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere, organic infantilism, lack of coordination of emotional processes, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and aptitude for affective outbursts.

The study of the peculiarities of the development of the intellectual and emotional sphere made it possible to see that the symptoms of mental retardation are very sharply manifested in the older preschool years, when children are assigned educational tasks.

CONCLUSION
The delay of mental development is manifested in the slow pace of maturation of the emotional and volitional sphere, and in intellectual insufficiency.

The latter is manifested in the fact that the child’s intellectual abilities are not age appropriate. Significant lag and originality is found in mental activity. All children with CRA 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 the peculiarities of memory are most clearly manifested in the process of solving problems associated with such components of mental activity as analysis, synthesis, synthesis and abstraction.

Given all the above, these children need a special approach.

Requirements for training, taking into account the characteristics of children with CRA:

Observance of certain hygienic requirements when organizing classes, that is, classes are held in a well-ventilated area, attention is drawn to the level of illumination and the placement of children in the classroom.

Careful selection of visual material for classes and its placement so that the extra material does not distract the attention of the child.

Control over the organization of the activities of children in the classroom: it is important to think about the possibility of changing the class of one activity to others, to include physical exercises in the lesson plan.

The defectologist should monitor the reaction, the behavior of each child and apply an individual approach.

References:
Vlasova T.A. and Pevzner MS About children with developmental disabilities. M. 1985

Children with CRA / ed. Vlasova T.A. M., 1983

Lebedinsky V.V. Mental development disorders in children. M., 1984

Pevzner, MS and others. Mental development of children with mental disability M., 1985

Poddubnaya N.G. The peculiarity of the processes of involuntary memory in first-graders with CRA // Defectology, № 4, 1980

Strekalova T.A. Features of logical thinking in preschool children with CRA // Defectology, № 4, 1982

Strekalova T.A. Features of visual thinking in preschoolers with CRA // Defectology, №1, 1987

Ul'enkova U.V. Six-year-old children with CRA. M., 1990

Reader: children with developmental disorders / comp. Astapov V.M., 1995

  Lebedinsky V.V. "" Violations of mental development in children "" M, 1984.

  Vlasova T.A., Pevzner, M.S. About children with developmental disabilities. M., 1973

  Children with CRA / ed. Vlasova TA, m. 1984

  Poddubnaya N.G. The peculiarity of the processes of involuntary memory in first-graders with CRA // Defectology, №4, 1980

  Poddubnaya N.G. The peculiarity of the processes of involuntary memory in first-graders with CRA // Defectology, №4. 1980

  Strekalova G.A. Features of visual thinking in preschoolers with CRA // Defectology, №1, 1987

  Strekalova T.A. Features of logical thinking of a preschooler with CRA // Defectology, No. 4, 1982

  Ul'enkova U.V. Six-year-old children with CRA. M., Pedagogy, 1990

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Home\u003e Coursework\u003e Psychology

MOSCOW OPEN SOCIAL ACADEMY

Correctional and Pedagogical Faculty

Course work

Topic: Psychological features of children with mental retardation of preschool age.

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Moscow, 2009

Introduction

Chapter II Psychological features of children with mental retardation of preschool age

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The study of patterns of developmental abnormalities of the psyche is a necessary task not only of pathopsychology, but also of defectology and child psychiatry, it is the search for these patterns, the study of the causes and mechanisms of the formation of a mental development defect in a timely manner to diagnose disorders and look for ways to correct them.

The spectrum of mental impairment in children is quite wide, but much more often among them is a delay in mental development.

In domestic correctional pedagogy, the concept of “mental retardation” is psychological and pedagogical, refers to the “borderline” form of diontogenesis and is expressed in a slower rate of maturation of various mental functions.

In infancy, the delay in mental development is manifested in the slow pace of development of sensorimotor functions, in lethargy, or, conversely, in the child's increased anxiety. At preschool age, parents and teachers often pay attention to the underdevelopment of speech in children, the later formation of the skills of neatness, independence. However, mental retardation is usually diagnosed by specialists in children by the end of preschool age or only upon entering school. Most clearly, it manifests itself in children in a decrease in the general stock of knowledge, in a limited understanding of the environment, in pronounced disorders of attention and memory. Children do not do well at school, teachers complain about their behavior and weak intellectual productivity. And if, by adolescence, mental retardation is not eliminated, it is reflected in personal immaturity, increased affectivity and often deviant behavior.

Psycho-pedagogical study of the possibilities of the mental development of children with mental retardation, according to V.I. Lubovsky, “his most important goal should be not only to establish the fact of developmental lag, but also to reveal the uniqueness of the manifestations of this lag” (8).

Currently, great strides have been made in the clinical and psychological-pedagogical study of children with mental retardation. But despite this, the problem of mental retardation and the difficulties of teaching these children is one of the most pressing psychological and pedagogical problems.

Based on the above, we define the goal, objectives, subject, method and structure of the study of this problem.

Objective: to theoretically study and analyze the psychological characteristics of children with mental retardation.

The object of this work is mental retardation

Subject: psychological characteristics of children with mental retardation.

Tasks: disclosure of the essence of the basic concepts;

identifying the state of the issue of mental retardation in the literature;

formulation of the conclusion, based on a theoretical analysis of the literature.

Method: analysis of general and special psychological, educational and methodical literature on the topic.

Structure: coursework consists of: introduction, chapters I, II, conclusion and list of references.

Chapter I. General characteristics of children with mental retardation

Mental retardation (CRA) is a violation of normal development in which a child who has reached school age continues to be in the circle of preschool, playful interests. The concept of “delay” emphasizes the temporal (inconsistency of the level of development with age) and, at the same time, the temporary nature of the lag, which is overcome with age more successfully, the earlier the adequate conditions for learning and development of children of this category are created.

In the psychological-pedagogical as well as medical literature, other approaches are used to the category of students in question: “children with reduced learning ability”, “lagging in learning”, “nervous children”. However, the criteria on the basis of which these groups are distinguished do not contradict the understanding of the nature of mental retardation. In accordance with one socio-pedagogical approach, such children are called “children at risk” (GF Kumarin).

History of study.

The problem of mild deviations in mental development arose and acquired special importance, both in foreign and domestic science, only in the middle of the 20th century, when, due to the rapid development of various fields of science and technology and the complication of programs of general education schools, a large number of children experienced learning. Teachers and psychologists attached great importance to the analysis of the reasons for this failure. Quite often, it was explained by mental retardation, which was accompanied by the referral of such children to auxiliary schools, which appeared in Russia in 1908-1910.

However, during clinical examination, more and more often, many of the children who did not properly assimilate the secondary school program could not detect the specific features inherent in mental retardation. In the 50 - 60-ies. This problem has acquired particular significance, with the result that, under the leadership of M.S. Pevzner, a student of L.S. Vygotsky, a specialist in the field of mental retardation clinics, a versatile study of the causes of academic failure was initiated. The sharp increase in academic failure against the backdrop of the complexity of training programs led her to suggest the existence of some form of mental disability, manifested in conditions of increased training requirements. A comprehensive clinical, psychological and pedagogical examination of persistently poor students from schools in various regions of the country and the analysis of a vast array of data formed the basis of the formulated ideas about children with mental retardation (CRA).

This is how a new category of abnormal children appeared, which are not subject to referral to auxiliary school and constitute a significant part (about 50%) of poorly performing pupils of the general education system. The work of M.S. Pevzner "Children with developmental disabilities: delimiting oligophrenia from similar conditions" (1966) and the book "A teacher about children with developmental disabilities", written in collaboration with TA Vlasova (1967), are the first in a series psychological and pedagogical publications devoted to the study and correction of CRA.

Thus, a complex of studies of this developmental anomaly, started at the Scientific-Research Institute of defectology of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences in the 1960s under the leadership of TA Vlassova and M.S. Pevzner, was dictated by the vital needs of life: on the one hand, the need to establish the causes of failure in public schools and search for ways to combat it, on the other - the need for further differentiation of mental retardation and other clinical disorders cognitive activity.

Comprehensive psychological and pedagogical studies of children diagnosed with CRA over the next 15 years have allowed to accumulate a large amount of data characterizing the peculiarity of the mental development of children in this category. According to all studied indicators of psychosocial development, children of this category are qualitatively different from other dystontogenetic disorders, on the one hand, and from “normal” development, on the other, occupying an intermediate position in terms of mental development between mentally retarded and normally developing peers. Thus, in terms of the level of intellectual development diagnosed using the Wechsler test, children with CRA often find themselves in the area of ​​so-called borderline mental retardation (IQ from 70 to 90 conventional units).

According to the International Classification, CRA is defined as "a general disorder of psychological development."

In foreign literature, children with CRA are considered either from a purely pedagogical position and are usually described as children with learning difficulties, or are defined as unsuitable, mainly due to unfavorable living conditions, pedagogically started, subjected to social and cultural deprivation. This group of children also include children with behavioral disorders. Other authors, according to the idea that the developmental delay, manifested in learning difficulties, is associated with residual (residual) organic brain damage, children in this category are called children with minimal brain damage or children with minimal (mild) brain dysfunction. The term “children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” - ADHD syndrome is widely used to describe children with specific partial learning difficulties.

Despite the rather large heterogeneity related to this type of disontogenetic disorders, they can be given the following definition.

Children with mental retardation include children who do not have pronounced developmental abnormalities (mental retardation, severe speech underdevelopment, expressed primary deficiencies in the functioning of individual analyzer systems - hearing, vision, and motor system). Children in this category have difficulties in adapting, including school, due to various biosocial causes (residual lung damage to the central nervous system or its functional immaturity, somatic weakness, cerebral states, immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere by type of psychophysical infantilism, as well as pedagogical neglect result of adverse socio-pedagogical conditions in the early stages of child ontogenesis). Difficulties experienced by children with mental retardation may be caused by deficiencies both in the regulatory component of mental activity (lack of attention, immaturity of the motivational sphere, general cognitive passivity and reduced self-control) and in its operational component (reduced level of development of individual mental processes, motor disorders , disability). The characteristics listed above do not prevent children from mastering general education development programs, but they make it necessary to adapt them to the psychophysical features of the child.

With the timely provision of a system of correctional-pedagogical, and in some cases medical care, it is possible to partially and completely overcome this developmental disability.

For the mental sphere of a child with CRA, it is typical to combine deficiency functions with safe. Partial (partial) deficiency of higher mental functions may be accompanied by infantile personality traits and behavior of the child. In some cases, the child suffers from working capacity, in other cases - arbitrariness in the organization of activities, in the third - the motivation for various types of cognitive activity, etc. mental development  Considering psychological features  older preschoolers with delayed mental development, first of all...

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All children with mental retardation have not formed a readiness for school.

This is manifested in the immaturity of the functional state of the central nervous system (weakness of the processes of inhibition and excitation, difficulties in the formation of complex conditional connections, a lag in the formation of connections between analyzers) and is one of the reasons that the children hardly master the skills of reading and writing, often confusing letters , similar in style, have difficulty in self-reproduction of the text.

Children with mental retardation are characterized by reduced mental performance.   The level of mental performance depends on the degree of weakness of the child and the nature of the organic or functional brain damage.

All children with mental retardation tend to decrease attention.   According to the data of psychologist G. I. Zharenkova, a decrease in the stability of attention in these guys may be of a different character: the maximum stress of attention at the beginning of the assignment and its subsequent decrease; offensive focus after a period of work; periodic changes in the voltage of attention and its decline during the whole period of work.

Psychological studies have revealed that the majority of children with mental retardation have an inferiority of subtle forms of visual and auditory perception, spatial and temporal impairments, and insufficient planning and execution of complex motor programs. These children need more time to receive and process visual, auditory and other impressions. This is especially pronounced in difficult conditions (for example, if there are simultaneously acting speech stimuli that have meaningful and emotional content that is meaningful to the child). One of the features of the perception of such children is that they perceive the similar qualities of objects as being identical (the oval, for example, is perceived as a circle).

In this category of children, spatial representations are insufficiently formed: orientation in the directions of space is carried out at the level of practical actions, perception of inverted images is difficult, difficulties arise in spatial analysis and the synthesis of the situation. The development of spatial relationships is closely connected with the formation of constructive thinking. Thus, when folding complex geometric patterns, children with mental retardation often cannot perform a complete analysis of the form, establish symmetry, the identity of the parts of the constructed figures, arrange the structure on a plane, and connect it into a single whole. It should be noted that relatively simple patterns children with mental retardation, in contrast to the mentally retarded, perform correctly.

Significant "scissors" are observed in children with mental retardation between the formation of practical skills in the field of spatial relationships and the possibility of their understanding and reflection in speech. The guys have great difficulty in understanding the logical and grammatical structures expressing spatial relationships, it is difficult for them to give a verbal report when performing tasks based on the awareness of these relations.

The memory of these children is reduced. Particularly affected are its types that require the participation of thought processes (mediated memorization). Reduced and the most elementary types of memory.

Mechanical memory these children are characterized by a decrease in the productivity of the first memorization attempts. But the time required for full memorization is close to normal. The children, although they have difficulties at the initial stage of memorizing words, in most cases successfully cope with the task (mentally retarded children do not cope with it). Involuntary memorization in younger students with mental retardation is less productive than in normally developing 5-6-year-old preschoolers. There is a decrease in productivity and stability of arbitrary memorization, especially under conditions of considerable stress.

Children with mental retardation show the greatest impairment in the possession of mediated memory.  There is a significant discrepancy between the ability to apply a certain intellectual technique and the efficiency of its use. In terms of diagnostics, the fulfillment of a task for the study of mediated memorization (by A. P. Leontiev's method) is very indicative: words are called, and the child is asked to pick up a picture for each word to facilitate memorization. Looking at the pictures, the child must reproduce the given words. When performing this task, children with mental retardation select the same pictures as normal developing peers to memorize. However, the subsequent reproduction of words on the basis of the pictures selected by them causes considerable difficulties, often not the words that were called by the experimenter.

Consequently, children with mental retardation are experiencing major difficulties in cases where it is necessary to make productive use of intellectual technique. Mentally retarded children, however, cannot logically enough pick a picture to a given word, so they cannot reproduce a word from it. Unlike children with mental retardation, they have great difficulty in applying a certain intellectual technique, and in the efficiency of its use.

Regardless of the structure and content of the material, up to grade 4, mechanical learning is mainly used, while normally developing children during this period (from grade 2 to grade 4) voluntary mediated memorization develops intensively.