Mental retardation (MDD). Perception of shape by children with mental retardation

Features of memory, attention, perception during delay mental development

Insufficient formation cognitive processes is often the main reason for the difficulties that children with mental retardation experience when learning at school. As numerous clinical and psychological-pedagogical studies show, memory impairments play a significant role in the structure of mental activity defects in this developmental anomaly.

Observations of teachers and parents of children with mental retardation, as well as special psychological research indicate deficiencies in the development of their involuntary memory. Much of what normally developing children remember easily, as if by themselves, causes significant effort in their lagging peers and requires specially organized work with them.

One of the main reasons for the insufficient productivity of involuntary memory in children with mental retardation is a decrease in their cognitive activity.

A decrease in voluntary memory in students with mental retardation is considered one of the main reasons for their difficulties in school learning. These children do not remember texts or multiplication tables well, and do not keep the goal and conditions of the task in mind. They are characterized by fluctuations in memory productivity and rapid forgetting of what they have learned.

Specific features of the memory of children with mental retardation:

Reduced memory capacity and memorization speed,

Involuntary memorization is less productive than normal,

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

Predominance of visual memory over verbal,

Decrease in arbitrary memory.

Violation of mechanical memory.

Instability of attention and decreased performance in children of this category have individual forms of manifestation. Thus, in some children the maximum tension of attention and the highest performance are detected at the beginning of the task and steadily decrease as the work continues; in other children, the greatest concentration of attention occurs after a certain period of activity, that is, these children need an additional period of time to engage in activity; The third group of children showed periodic fluctuations in attention and uneven performance throughout the entire task.

Causes of impaired attention:

1. The asthenic phenomena present in the child have an influence.

2. The mechanism of voluntariness in children is not fully formed.

3. Lack of motivation, the child shows good concentration of attention when it is interesting, but where a different level of motivation is required, there is a violation of interest.

Voluntary attention is more severely impaired. In correctional 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 attentive?”, “What’s missing on the table?” and so on). In the process of individual work, use techniques such as: drawing flags, houses, working from a model, etc.

A child with mental retardation has a low (compared to normally developing peers) level of perception development. This is manifested in the need for a longer time to receive and process sensory information; in the insufficiency and fragmentation of these children’s knowledge about the world around them; in difficulties in recognizing objects in an unusual position, contour and schematic images. The similar qualities of these objects are usually perceived by them as the same. These children do not always recognize and often mix letters of similar design and their individual elements; often mistakenly perceive combinations of letters, etc.

Causes of impaired perception in children with mental retardation:

With mental retardation, the integrative activity of the cerebral cortex is impaired, cerebral hemispheres and, as a consequence, the coordinated work of various analytical systems is disrupted: hearing, vision, motor system, which leads to a disruption of the systemic mechanisms of perception.

Lack of attention in children with mental retardation.

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

It is necessary to note the features of the development of thinking in children with mental retardation.

level of development of attention;

level of development of perception and ideas about the world around us (the richer the experience, the more complex conclusions the child can draw);

level of speech development;

level of formation of voluntary mechanisms (regulatory mechanisms).

The thinking of children with mental retardation is more intact than that of mentally retarded children; the ability to generalize, abstract, accept help, and transfer skills to other situations is more preserved.

The development of thinking is influenced by all mental processes:

Level of development of attention;

The level of development of perception and ideas about the surrounding world (than

The richer the experience, the more complex conclusions a child can draw).

Level of speech development;

The level of formation of voluntary mechanisms (regulatory

mechanisms). The older the child, the more complex problems he can solve. By the age of 6-7 years, preschoolers are able to perform complex intellectual tasks, even if they are not interesting to him.

In children with mental retardation, all these prerequisites for the development of thinking are impaired to one degree or another. Children have difficulty concentrating on a task. These children have impaired perception, they have a rather meager experience in their arsenal - all this determines the thinking characteristics of a child with mental retardation. That aspect of cognitive processes that is disrupted in a child is associated with a violation of one of the components of thinking.

Children with mental retardation suffer from coherent speech and the ability to plan their activities using speech is impaired; inner speech is impaired - an active remedy logical thinking child.

General deficiencies in the mental activity of children with mental retardation :

1. Lack of formation of cognitive, search motivation (a peculiar attitude towards any intellectual tasks). Children tend to avoid any intellectual effort. For them, the moment of overcoming difficulties is unattractive (refusal to perform a difficult task, substitution of an intellectual task for a closer, game task.). Such a child does not complete the task completely, but only a simpler part of it. Children are not interested in the outcome of the task. This feature of thinking manifests itself at school, when children very quickly lose interest in new subjects.

2. The absence of a pronounced indicative stage in solving mental problems. Children with mental retardation begin to act immediately, on the fly. When presented with instructions for the task, many children did not understand the task, but sought to quickly

get experimental material and start acting. It should be noted that children with mental retardation are more interested in finishing the 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 indicative stage, which leads to many errors. When a child begins to learn, it is very important to create conditions for him to initially think and analyze the task.

3 Low mental activity, “mindless” style of work (children, due to haste and disorganization, act at random, without fully taking into account the given conditions; there is no directed search for solutions or overcoming difficulties). Children solve a problem on an intuitive level, that is, the child seems to give the answer correctly, but cannot explain it.

4. Stereotypical thinking, its pattern.

Visual-figurative thinking.

Children with mental retardation find it difficult to act according to a visual model due to violations of analysis operations, violation of integrity, focus, activity of perception - all this leads to the fact that the child finds it difficult to analyze

sample, highlight the main parts, establish relationships between parts and reproduce this structure in the course of their own activities.

Logical thinking.

Children with mental retardation have impairments in the most important mental operations, which serve as components of logical thinking:

Analysis (gets carried away by small details, cannot highlight the main thing, highlights insignificant features);

Comparison (comparing objects based on incomparable, unimportant characteristics);

Classification (the child often makes the classification correctly, but cannot understand its principle, cannot explain why he did this).

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

Children independently master two types of inferences:

1. Induction (the child is able to draw a general conclusion using particular facts, that is, from the particular to the general).

2. Deduction (from general to specific).

Children with mental retardation experience great difficulty in forming the simplest conclusions. The stage in the development of logical thinking - drawing a conclusion from two premises - is still little accessible to children with mental retardation. In order for children to be able to draw a conclusion, they are greatly helped by an adult who indicates the direction of thought, highlighting those dependencies between which relationships should be established.

Children with mental retardation do not know how to reason or draw conclusions; try to avoid such situations. These children, due to their undeveloped logical thinking, give random, thoughtless answers and show an inability to analyze the conditions of the problem. When working with these children, it is necessary to pay special attention to the development of all forms of thinking in them.

Delayed mental development manifests itself in a slow rate of maturation of the emotional-volitional sphere, as well as in intellectual failure.

The child's intellectual abilities do not correspond to his age. A significant lag and originality is found in mental activity. All children with mental retardation have memory deficiencies, and this applies to all types of memorization: involuntary and voluntary, short-term and long-term. The lag in mental activity and memory characteristics are most clearly manifested in the process of solving problems associated with such components of mental activity as analysis, synthesis, generalization and abstraction.

Considering all of the above, these children need a special approach.

Special Conditions are formed in children as a result of pedagogical neglect. In these cases, a child with a full-fledged nervous system, but who has been in conditions of informational and often emotional deprivation for a long time, has an insufficient level of development of skills, knowledge, and abilities. Psychological structure this deviation and its prognosis will be more favorable. In familiar situations, such a child can navigate quite well; the dynamics of his development under conditions of intensive pedagogical correction will be very significant. At the same time, in a child healthy from birth, providedearly Deprivation may also result in underdevelopment of certain mental functions. If the child does not receive pedagogical assistance in a sensitive timeframe, then these shortcomings may be irreversible.

Vera Semenova
Psychological and pedagogical diagnostics and correction of the peculiarities of perception in preschool children with mental retardation

Dear colleagues, today I want to introduce you to one of the areas correctional work -"Psychological and pedagogical diagnostics and correction of peculiarities of perception in preschool children with mental retardation". In your work, you, like me, meet children with a delay mental development. Therefore, I think the topic is relevant for you too.

Let's remember what it is perception? Perception- a complex system of processes for receiving and converting information that provides the body with a reflection of objective reality and orientation in the surrounding world. In process perception motor components are always included in the form of palpation of an object, eye movements that highlight the most informative points, singing or pronouncing the corresponding sounds, which play an important role in establishing the most significant features of the sound stream.

Visual perception- a set of processes for constructing a visual image of the world based on sensory information obtained through the visual system.

Auditory perception- this is the ability to distinguish various sounds of the surrounding reality according to their basic characteristics: strength (volume, pitch, timbre, tempo.

Tactile (tactile) perception is a complex form of sensitivity, including both elementary and complex components. The first includes sensations of cold, heat and pain, the second - the actual tactile sensations. (touch and pressure).

So, perception- this is the result of the activity of the analyzer system. The primary analysis, which takes place in the receptors, is complemented by the complex analytical and synthetic activity of the brain sections of the analyzers. Unlike sensations, in processes perception the image of a holistic object is formed by reflecting the totality of its properties. However, the image perception cannot be reduced to a simple sum of sensations, although it includes them in its composition. In fact perception whole objects or situations are much more complex. In addition to the sensations in the process perception previous experience, processes of understanding, what perceived, i.e. into the process mental perceptions are included even higher level processes such as memory and thinking. That's why perception very often called the human perceptual system.

What Peculiarities of perception in preschool children with mental retardation?

These children have a reduced speed of performing perceptual operations. Approximate research activity as a whole has a lower level compared to the norm development: children do not know how to examine an object, do not show pronounced orienting activity, for a long time resort to practical ways orientation in the properties of objects.

Unlike children with intellectual disabilities preschoolers with mental retardation development, they do not experience difficulties in practical discrimination of the properties of objects, however, their sensory experience is not fixed and generalized in the word for a long time. Therefore, the child cannot correctly follow the instruction containing the verbal designation of the feature ( "give me a red pencil", although he names the color himself.

Special children experience difficulties in mastering the ideas of magnitude, do not single out and do not designate individual parameters of magnitude (length, width, height, thickness). The process of analyzing is complicated perception children do not know how to identify the main structural elements of an object, their spatial relationship, and small details. We can talk about the slow pace of formation of a holistic image of an object, which is reflected in the problems associated with artistic activity.

From the auditory side perception no serious disorders. Children may experience some difficulty in navigating non-speech sounds, but phonemic processes are mainly affected.

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

To determine the level of development perception, you can offer children the following tasks:

Determine the direction and end of the path of an object on lines - labyrinths;

Find this item among similar ones;

Say what is missing in the drawings;

Find what objects are hidden in the drawings;

Assemble the pyramid correctly and incorrectly assembled by the teacher;

Find a suitable patch for the rug;

Make a picture cut into four parts;

Guess what sounded behind the screen (for example, pouring water from glass to glass, rustling paper);

Determine which musical instrument sounds behind the screen;

Beat out the rhythm according to the teacher’s model;

Determine where the sound is coming from;

Say the word loudly, quietly;

Find out by touch what item is in the bag;

Determine with your eyes closed which part of the body the teacher touched;

Determine with your eyes closed how many times the teacher touched your arm or back;

Determine with your eyes closed what figure the teacher has drawn on the child’s skin;

Show right (left) hand (leg, ear) at home and at the teacher standing opposite;

Guess with your eyes closed what material the proposed object is made of.

I would like to note that for diagnostics of this mental process, you need to provide material that is familiar to children. You can’t, for example, play a babalayka behind a screen if the children don’t know what a balalaika is and what it sounds like. We can take a tambourine, a drum, a rattle.

As a result diagnostics among the children in my group, it was revealed that 38.6% of children successfully completed the proposed tasks, 28.1% had difficulties completing the tasks, 33.3% of children did not cope with the proposed tasks.

Given the fact that preschool age is sensitive for the formation of all types perception, I have developed a system of additional classes for correction of this mental process. These classes included tasks and games aimed both at developing visual perception, proposed by Ya. O. Mikfeld in the program for the prevention of optical dysgraphia and dyslexia, and on correction auditory and tactile perception. The entire system included 12 lessons, taking into account the level of development and type of leading activity preschoolers. These classes were conducted once a week for 3 months.

It should be noted that the content of the tasks offered to children is constantly becoming more complex. And didactic games were used as the main means of teaching.

Lesson system for correction of perception in preschoolers with ZPR included tasks that children performed at tables, as well as outdoor games that helped change the type of activity of the children and diversify correctional classes

An example of one of the activities before you: here you see the names of the games, correctional tasks for each game and equipment needed to conduct the lesson.

1 "What is missing?" Visual development perception Sheet No. 6 for each child, colored pencils

2 “What did the artist mix up?” Visual development perception Sheet No. 7 for each child, colored pencils

3 "Arrange the figures" Development of visual memory Set of figures

4 "Running on Signal" Hearing development perception Tambourine

5 “Recognize your figure by touch” Development of tactile perception Set of geometric shapes made of velvet paper or cardboard

Let me briefly describe the contents correctional work. Improving visual perception items provides: visual shape perception; colors; size; as well as a set of characteristics of objects.

As basic exercises are used: "Find the same", "Remember the pictures", “Make a stick figure”, "What is missing?", "Arrange the figures", "What changed?", “Complete the animal” etc.

Hearing development perception includes several stages:

Guessing a sounding object, instrument, melody; differentiation of acoustically distant isolated sounds; differentiation of acoustically close isolated sounds;

perception of groups of sounds;

differentiation of subtle acoustic differences in sounds.

At this stage we use the following types exercises and tasks: "Running on Signal", "Guess who called", "Repeat, don't make a mistake", "Say it the other way around" etc.

Development of tactile perception includes: differentiation of objects by shape; differentiation of objects made from different materials, comparison of objects by size to the touch (of the same shape, but different sizes, comparison of objects by weight. The following types are used exercises: “Recognize your figure by touch”, « Wonderful pouch» , "Feather and Chair", "Train sensitivity", “Find out what surface you walked on” etc.

State of the art perceptions after correctional classes:

high level showed 73.7% of children (45.1% increase);

average level – 14% (down 14.1%);

low level 12.3% (down 21%).

Based on the above, you can do conclusion: sensory development in preschool age is one of the areas of mental development. Quick selection of informative properties about an object promotes its effective identification. Perception combined with practical actions, they seem to help each other. Invaluable role perception in the child’s mastery of writing, reading, and counting skills.

Efficiency diagnostics and correction of perception in older preschoolers with ZPR depends on the following conditions:

Taking into account the structure of cognitive processes in preschoolers with mental retardation;

Use of fixed assets corrections - didactic games;

Gradual complication of the content of tasks and assignments offered to children.

Children with mental retardation are characterized primarily by insufficient, limited and fragmented knowledge about the environment. world. The perception of such children is defective and does not provide sufficient information. Not only the individual properties of perception are violated, but also perception as an activity, including motivational-target and operational components. There is a general passivity of perception, which manifests itself in attempts to replace a more complex task with an easier one.

Low level of analyzing observation:

limited scope of analysis;
the predominance of analysis over synthesis;
mixing of essential and non-essential features;
predominant fixation of attention on visible differences in objects;
rare use of generalized terms and concepts.

Deficiencies in visual perception are combined with the problem of forming mental activity and reduce their ability to learn, clearly highlighting contour figures crossed out by lines and strokes; such children find it difficult to isolate images superimposed on each other, understand tasks related to determining directions with errors, oriented on the plane of the sheet. Children analyze the shapes of geometric figures poorly and cannot correlate objects, but according to 2-3 characteristics (color, shape, size). The speed of perception of children with mental retardation is characterized by pronounced slowness. They need more time to receive and process information.

Deficiencies in perception negatively affect the development of all voluntary activities, especially in children with mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin. The following perceptual properties are impaired:

objectivity,
structurality (difficulties in recognizing objects that are in an unusual perspective of contour and schematic images).

In addition, integrity suffers:

difficulties, if necessary, to isolate individual elements from an object that is perceived as a whole;
difficulties in completing the construction of a complete image from any part of it;
a holistic image from individual elements is formed slowly (puzzles).

Peculiarities of perception of children with mental retardation:

difficulties in recognizing objects presented from an unusual angle;
make mistakes in recognizing objects on contour and schematic images, especially those that are crossed out or superimposed on each other;
slow viewing of objects (short-term perception);
difficulties in creating a visual image;
it is difficult to identify objects or figures against the background of “noise”;
mixing letters of similar style;
children are negatively affected by the complexity of objects and deterioration external conditions education.

Flaws auditory perception in children they manifest themselves in phonemic disorders (poorly differentiate sounds, it is difficult to distinguish order and sequence in a word). The formation of spatial representations in children is manifested in the difficulties of right-left orientation. In 8% of children, insufficient optical-spatial orientation in object images was revealed, in 64% - errors in the optical-spatial orientation of letters. Children find it difficult, if necessary, to give a verbal report in the process of orientation in space. Difficulties in the formation of ideas about spatial relations are explained by the underdevelopment of the processes of spatial analysis and synthesis.

Features of the cognitive sphere of children with mental retardation are widely covered in the psychological and pedagogical literature (V. I. Lubovsky, T. P. Artemyeva, S. G. Shevchenko, M. S. Pevzner, etc.). Despite a large number of classifications that have been proposed by various specialists working in this field, they all highlight the general structure of the defect of mental retardation, based on the origin of the violation. With mental retardation in children, there are deviations in the intellectual, emotional and personal spheres.

Students with mental retardation have insufficient cognitive activity, which, combined with rapid fatigue and exhaustion of the child, can seriously impede their learning and development. Thus, quickly occurring fatigue leads to a decrease in performance, which manifests itself in difficulties in mastering educational material.

Children and adolescents with this pathology are characterized by frequent transitions from a state of activity to complete or partial passivity, changes in work and non-work moods, which is associated with their neuropsychic states. At the same time, sometimes external circumstances (complexity of the task, large amount of work, etc.) throw the child out of balance, make him nervous and worried.

Students with mental retardation may exhibit disruptions in their behavior. They find it difficult to get into the working mode of the lesson; they can jump up, walk around the class, and ask questions that are not related to this lesson. Tiring quickly, some children become lethargic, passive, and do not work; others are hyperexcitable, disinhibited, and restless motorly. These children are very touchy and hot-tempered. Bringing them out of such states requires time, special methods and great tact on the part of the teacher and other adults surrounding the teenager with this developmental defect.

They have difficulty switching from one activity to another. Children and adolescents with mental retardation are characterized by significant heterogeneity of impaired and intact parts of mental activity. The most disturbed is the emotional-personal sphere and general characteristics of activity (cognitive activity, especially spontaneous, purposefulness, control, performance), in comparison with relatively higher indicators of thinking and memory.

G.E. Sukhareva believes that children and adolescents with mental retardation are characterized mainly by insufficient maturity of the affective-volitional sphere. Analyzing the dynamics of the development of unstable individuals, G. E. Sukhareva emphasizes that their social adaptation depends more on the influence of the environment than on themselves. On the one hand, they are highly suggestible and impulsive, and on the other hand, there is a pole of immaturity of higher forms of volitional activity, an inability to develop a stable socially approved life stereotype for overcoming difficulties, a tendency to follow the path of least resistance, failure to develop one’s own prohibitions, and exposure to negative external influences. . All these criteria characterize a low level of criticality, immaturity, and inability to adequately assess the situation, and as a result, children with mental retardation do not develop anxiety.

Also, G. E. Sukhareva uses the term “mental instability” in relation to behavioral disorders in adolescents, meaning by this the lack of formation of one’s own line of behavior due to increased suggestibility, a tendency to be guided in actions by the emotion of pleasure, inability to exert volition, systematic labor activity, persistent attachments and, secondarily, in connection with the listed features - sexual immaturity of the individual, manifested in the weakness and instability of moral attitudes. Conducted by G. E. Sukhareva, a study of adolescents with disorders affective sphere according to the type of mental instability, allowed us to draw the following conclusions: such adolescents are characterized by moral immaturity, lack of a sense of duty, responsibility, inability to inhibit their desires, obey school discipline and increased suggestibility and incorrect forms of behavior of others.

To summarize, we can draw the following conclusions. Adolescents with mental retardation are characterized by behavioral disorders such as mental instability and disinhibition of drives.

Adolescents with these types of behavioral disorders are distinguished by features of emotional and volitional immaturity, insufficient sense of duty, responsibility, strong-willed attitudes, expressed intellectual interests, lack of a sense of distance, infantile bravado and corrected behavior.

The emotional surface easily leads to conflict situations, in the resolution of which there is a lack of self-control and introspection. There is carelessness in relationships due to negative actions, underestimation of the drama and complexity of the situation. Teenagers can easily make promises and easily forget them. They have no experience with learning failures. And the weakness of educational interests results in yard games, the need for movement and physical relaxation. Boys are often prone to irritability, girls are often prone to tears. Both of them are prone to lies, which outstrip immature forms of self-affirmation. The infantilism inherent in this group of adolescents is often colored by features of cerebro-organic insufficiency, motor disinhibition, importunity, and a euphoric tint high mood, affective outbursts, accompanied by a strong vegetative component, often followed by headache, low performance, and severe fatigue.

Also, such teenagers are characterized by high self-esteem, with a low level of anxiety, an inadequate level of aspirations - a weak reaction to failure, an exaggeration of success.

Thus, this group of adolescents is characterized by a lack of educational motivation, and non-recognition of adult authority is combined with one-sided worldly maturity, a corresponding reorientation of interests towards a lifestyle appropriate to older age.

However, an analysis of disorders in adolescents with mental retardation confirms the opinion about the role of favorable conditions of education and upbringing in the prevention of behavioral decompensation. In the conditions of special training, the asynchrony of development characteristic of mental infantilism is largely smoothed out due to the targeted formation of both personal properties and skills of voluntary activity.

Features of mental activity of students with mental retardation.

Memory:

Insufficient development of cognitive processes is often the main reason for the difficulties that children with mental retardation experience when learning at school. As numerous clinical and psychological-pedagogical studies show, memory impairments play a significant role in the structure of mental activity defects in this developmental anomaly.

T.A. Vlasova, M.S. Pevsner point to decreased voluntary memory among students with mental retardation as one of the main reasons for their difficulties in school learning. These children do not remember texts or multiplication tables well, and do not keep the goal and conditions of the task in mind. They are characterized by fluctuations in memory productivity and rapid forgetting of what they have learned.

Specific features of the memory of children with mental retardation:

Reduced memory capacity and memorization speed,

· Involuntary memorization is less productive than normal,

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

Predominance of visual memory over verbal memory,

· Reduced random memory.

· Impaired mechanical memory.

Attention :

Causes of impaired attention:

1. The child’s existing asthenic phenomena have an impact.

2. The mechanism of voluntariness in children is not fully formed.

3. Lack of motivation; the child shows good concentration when it’s interesting, but when a different level of motivation is required – a violation of interest.

Researcher of children with mental retardation Zharenkova L.M. notes the following features of attention, characteristic of this violation: low concentration of attention: the child’s inability to concentrate on a task, on any activity, rapid distractibility.

In the study by N.G. Poddubny clearly showed up features of attention in children with mental retardation:

· During the entire experimental task, cases of fluctuations in attention, a large number of distractions, rapid exhaustion and fatigue were observed .

· Low level of stability of attention. Children cannot be engaged in the same activity for a long time.

· Narrow attention span.

Voluntary attention is more severely impaired.

The development of thinking is influenced by all mental processes:

The level of development of attention;

· level of development of perception and ideas about the world around us (the richer the experience, the more complex conclusions the child can draw).

· level of speech development;

· level of formation of voluntary mechanisms (regulatory mechanisms). The older the child, the more complex problems he can solve.

That aspect of cognitive processes that is disrupted in a child is associated with a violation of one of the components of thinking.

General deficiencies in the mental activity of children with mental retardation:

2. Lack of a pronounced orientation stage when solving mental problems. Children with mental retardation begin to act immediately, on the fly. This position was confirmed in the experiment of N.G. Poddubny. When presented with instructions for the task, many children did not understand the task, but sought to quickly obtain the experimental material and begin to act. It should be noted that children with mental retardation are more interested in finishing the 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 indicative stage, which leads to many errors. When a child begins to learn, it is very important to create conditions for him to initially think and analyze the task.

3. Low mental activity, “mindless” style of work (children, due to haste and disorganization, act at random, without fully taking into account the given conditions; there is no directed search for solutions or overcoming difficulties). Children solve a problem on an intuitive level, that is, the child seems to give the answer correctly, but cannot explain it.

4. Stereotypical thinking, its pattern.

Visual-figurative thinking .

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Patterns and features of the development of perception in children with mental retardation

1. Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with mental retardation

1.1 Concept and reasonsmental retardation

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

In psychological and pedagogical, as well as medical literature other approaches are used to the category of students under consideration: “children with learning disabilities”, “lagging behind 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.”

The problem of mild deviations in mental development arose and acquired special significance, both in foreign and domestic science, only in the middle of the 20th century, when, due to the rapid development various areas science and technology and the increasing complexity of general education school curricula, a large number of children with learning difficulties appeared. Educators and psychologists attached great importance to analyzing the causes of this failure. Quite often it was explained by mental retardation, which was accompanied by the sending of such children to auxiliary schools that appeared in Russia in 1908-1910.

However, when clinical examination increasingly, many of the children who poorly mastered the general education school program could not detect the specific features inherent in mental retardation. In the 50-60s. this problem has acquired particular significance, as a result of which, under the leadership of M.S. Pevzner, students L.S. Vygotsky, a specialist in the field of mental retardation, began a comprehensive study of the causes of academic failure. The sharp increase in academic failure against the backdrop of increasingly complex educational programs led her to assume the existence of some form of mental deficiency that manifests itself in conditions of increased educational demands. A comprehensive clinical, psychological and pedagogical examination of persistently underperforming students from schools in various regions of the country and analysis of a huge array of data formed the basis for the formulated ideas about children with mental retardation (MDD).

Children with mental retardation include children who do not have pronounced developmental disabilities (mental retardation, severe speech underdevelopment, severe primary deficiencies in the functioning of individual analytical systems - hearing, vision, motor system). Children in this category experience adaptation difficulties, including school adaptation, due to various biosocial reasons. The difficulties experienced by children with mental retardation can be caused not only by lack of attention, immaturity of the motivational sphere, general cognitive passivity and reduced self-control, but also by the underdevelopment of certain mental processes, motor disorders, and performance disorders. The characteristics listed above do not prevent children from mastering general education programs, but they necessitate a certain adaptation to the psychophysical characteristics 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 sometimes completely overcome this developmental deviation.

Mental retardation in children is a complex polymorphic disorder in which different children suffer from different components of their mental, psychological and physical activity.

Causes of mental retardation.

The causes of mental retardation are varied. Risk factors for the development of mental retardation in a child can be divided into main groups: biological and social.

Among biological factors, two groups are distinguished: medical-biological and hereditary.

Medical and biological causes include early organic lesions of the central nervous system. Most children have a history of a burdened perinatal period, associated primarily with an unfavorable course of pregnancy and childbirth.

According to neurophysiologists active growth and human brain maturation takes place in the second half of pregnancy and the first 20 weeks after birth. This same period is critical, since the structures of the central nervous system become most sensitive to pathogenic influences that retard growth and prevent the active development of the brain.

To risk factors intrauterine pathology can be attributed:

Old or very young age of the mother,

The mother is burdened with chronic somatic or obstetric pathology before or during pregnancy.

All this can manifest itself in low birth weight of a child, in syndromes of increased neuro-reflex excitability, in sleep and wakefulness disorders, in increased muscle tone in the first weeks of life.

Often, ZPR can be caused by infectious diseases in infancy, traumatic brain injury, severe somatic diseases.

A number of authors distinguish hereditary factors of mental retardation, which include congenital and including hereditary inferiority of the central nervous system of the child. It is often observed in children with delayed cerebroorganic genesis, with minimal brain dysfunctions. The literature emphasizes the predominance of boys among patients with mental retardation, which can be explained by a number of reasons:

Higher vulnerability of the male fetus in relation to pathological effects during pregnancy and childbirth;

A relatively lower degree of functional interhemispheric asymmetry in girls compared to boys, which leads to a greater reserve of compensatory capabilities in case of damage to brain systems that provide higher mental activity.

Most often in the literature there are indications of the following unfavorable psychosocial conditions that exacerbate mental retardation in children. This:

unwanted pregnancy;

Single mother or growing up in single-parent families;

Frequent conflicts and inconsistency of approaches to education;

Presence of a criminal environment;

Low level of education of parents;

Living in conditions of insufficient material security and dysfunctional life;

Factors of a big city: noise, long commute to and from work, unfavorable environmental factors.

Features and types of family education;

Early mental and social deprivation of the child;

Stressful situations in which the child is, etc.

However, a combination of biological and social factors plays an important role in the development of ZPR. For example, an unfavorable social environment (outside and inside the family) provokes and exacerbates the influence of organic and hereditary factors on the child's intellectual and emotional development.

1.2 Classification of mental retardation

In the clinical and psychological-pedagogical literature, several classifications of mental retardation are presented.

Outstanding child psychiatrist G.E. Sukhareva, studying children suffering from persistent school failure, emphasized that the disorders diagnosed in them must be distinguished from mild forms of mental retardation. In addition, as the author noted, mental retardation should not be identified with a delay in the rate of mental development. Mental retardation is a more persistent intellectual disability, while mental retardation is a reversible condition. Based on the etiological criteria, that is, the causes of the onset of ZPR, G.E. Sukhareva identified the following forms:

Intellectual deficiency due to adverse environmental conditions, upbringing or pathology of behavior;

Intellectual impairment with long-term asthenic conditions caused by somatic diseases;

Intellectual impairment various forms infantilism;

Secondary intellectual insufficiency due to damage to hearing, vision, defects in speech, reading and writing;

Functional-dynamic intellectual disorders in children in the residual stage and the remote period of infections and injuries of the central nervous system.

Research by M.S. Pevzner and T.A. Vlasova made it possible to distinguish two main forms of mental retardation:

V.V. Kovalev identifies four main forms of ZPR:

b dysontogenetic form of mental retardation, in which the deficiency is caused by mechanisms of delayed or distorted mental development of the child;

b encephalopathic form of mental retardation, which is based on organic damage to brain mechanisms on early stages ontogeny;

b mental retardation due to underdevelopment of analyzers (blindness, deafness, underdevelopment of speech, etc.), caused by the action of the mechanism of sensory deprivation;

Classification V.V. Kovaleva is of great importance in the diagnosis of children and adolescents with mental retardation. However, it must be taken into account that the author does not consider the problem of ZPR as an independent one. nosological group, but as a syndrome in various forms of dysontogenesis (cerebral palsy, speech impairment, etc.).

The most informative for psychologists and teachers is the classification of K.S. Lebedinskaya. Based on a comprehensive clinical, psychological and pedagogical study of underachieving primary schoolchildren, the author developed a clinical taxonomy of mental retardation.

Just like the classification of V.V. Kovalev, classification by K.S. Lebedinskaya is based on the etiological principle and includes four main options for mental retardation:

Delayed mental development of constitutional origin;

It is diagnosed in children with manifestations of mental and psychophysical infantilism. In the psychological literature, it refers to developmental retardation, manifested by the preservation in adulthood of the physical structure or character traits inherent in childhood.

The prevalence of mental infantilism, according to some authors, is 1.6% among the child population.

Its causes are most often relatively mild brain lesions: infectious, toxic and others, including trauma and fetal asphyxia.

In clinical practice, two forms of mental infantilism are distinguished: simple and complicated. In further studies, four main variants were identified: harmonic (simple), disharmonic, organic and psychogenic infantilism.

Harmonic (simple) infantilism manifests itself in a uniform delay in the pace of physical and mental development of the individual, expressed in the immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere, affecting the child’s behavior and his social adaptation. The name “harmonic infantilism” was proposed by G.E. Sukhareva.

His clinical picture characterized by features of immaturity, "childhood" in somatic and mental form. Children in growth and physical development lag behind their peers by 1.5-2 years, they are characterized by lively facial expressions, expressive gestures, fast, jerky movements. In the foreground is tirelessness in the game and fatigue when performing practical tasks. Especially quickly they get bored with monotonous tasks that require holding focused attention for quite a long time (drawing, counting, reading, writing). With a full-fledged intellect, insufficiently expressed interests in writing, reading, and counting are noted.

Children are characterized by a weak ability to mental stress, increased imitation, suggestibility. However, by the age of 6-7, the child already understands and regulates his behavior quite well, depending on the need to perform this or that work.

Disharmonic infantilism may be associated with endocrine diseases. Thus, with insufficient production of adrenal hormones and gonadal hormones at the age of 12-13 years, there may be a delay in puberty in both boys and girls. At the same time, peculiar features of the adolescent’s psyche are formed, characteristic of the so-called hypogenital infantilism. More often, traits of immaturity appear in boys. Teenagers are slow, get tired quickly, and their performance is very uneven - higher in the first half of the day. Memory loss is detected. Attention quickly dissipates, so the student makes many mistakes. The interests of adolescents with the hypogenital form of infantilism are unique: for example, boys are more interested in quiet activities. Motor skills and abilities are not sufficiently developed, they are clumsy, slow and clumsy. These children with good intelligence, are distinguished by great erudition, but they cannot always use their knowledge in class, as they are very absent-minded and inattentive. They are prone to fruitless discussions on any topic. They are very touchy and painfully experience their failures in school and difficulties in communicating with peers. I feel better in the company of adults, where they are considered erudites. Signs of hypogenital infantilism in the appearance of a teenager are short stature, plumpness, a “moon-shaped” face, and a squeaky voice.

The neuropathic variant of complicated infantilism is characterized by the presence of weak mental traits. Usually these children are very timid, fearful, dependent, overly attached to their mother, and difficult to adapt to child care institutions. From birth, such children fall asleep with great difficulty and have restless sleep. Timid, shy by nature, they find it difficult to get used to children's team. They are very passive in class and do not answer questions in front of strangers. In their intellectual abilities sometimes they are ahead of their peers, but they do not know how to demonstrate their knowledge - uncertainty is felt in the answers, which worsens the teacher’s idea of their true knowledge. Such children often have a fear of giving an oral answer. Their performance is quickly depleted. Infantility also manifests itself in complete practical inability. Motor skills are marked by angularity and slowness.

Against the background of these mental traits, so-called school neuroses may arise. The child is very reluctant to attend school. Any somatic disease greets with joy, as the opportunity arises to stay at home. This is not laziness, but a fear of separation from the usual environment, the mother. The difficulty of adapting to school leads to a decrease in the assimilation of educational material, memory and attention deteriorate. The child becomes lethargic and distracted.

Psychogenic infantilism, as a special variant of infantilism, in domestic psychiatry and psychology has not been studied enough. This option is considered as an expression of abnormal personality formation under conditions of improper upbringing. It usually happens in families where there is one child who is cared for by several adults. This often prevents the child from developing independence, will, ability, and then the desire to overcome the slightest difficulties.

With normal intellectual development, such a child learns unevenly, because he is not accustomed to work and does not want to independently complete and check assignments.

Adaptation in a group of this category of children is difficult due to character traits such as selfishness and opposition to the class, which leads not only to conflict situations, but also to the development of a neurotic state in the child.

Particular attention should be paid to children with so-called microsocial neglect. These children have an insufficient level of development of skills, abilities and knowledge against the background of a full-fledged nervous system due to prolonged exposure to a lack of information, not only intellectual, but also very often emotional. Unfavorable upbringing conditions (with chronic alcoholism parents, in conditions of neglect, etc.) cause a slow formation of the communicative and cognitive activity of children at an early age. L.S. Vygotsky repeatedly emphasized that the process of formation of a child’s psyche is determined by the social situation of development, which is understood as the relationship between the child and the social reality around him.

In dysfunctional families, the child experiences a lack of communication. This problem arises with all its severity in school age in connection with school adaptation. With intact intelligence, these children cannot independently organize their activities: they experience difficulties in planning and identifying its stages, and they are unable to adequately evaluate the results. There is a pronounced lack of attention, impulsiveness, and lack of interest in improving one’s performance. Tasks are especially difficult when they need to be completed according to verbal instructions. On the one hand, they experience increased fatigue, and on the other, they are very irritable, prone to affective outbursts and conflicts.

With appropriate training, children with infantilism are able to receive secondary or incomplete secondary education; they have access to vocational education, secondary specialized education and even higher education. However, in the presence of unfavorable factors, it is possible negative dynamics, especially with complicated infantilism, which can manifest itself in mental and social maladaptation of children and adolescents.

So, if we evaluate the dynamics of the mental development of children with infantilism in general, then it is predominantly favorable. As experience shows, the manifestation of pronounced personal emotional-volitional immaturity tends to decrease with age.

Delayed mental development of somatogenic origin;

The causes of this type of mental development delay are various chronic diseases, infections, childhood neuroses, congenital and acquired malformations of the somatic system. With this form of mental retardation, children may have a persistent asthenic manifestation, which reduces not only the physical status, but also the psychological balance of the child. Children are characterized by fearfulness, shyness, and lack of self-confidence. Children in this category of mental retardation have little contact with their peers due to the guardianship of parents who try to protect their children from what they think is unnecessary communication, so they have a low threshold for interpersonal connections. With this type of mental retardation, children need treatment in special sanatoriums. The further development and education of these children depends on their state of health.

Mental retardation of psychogenic origin;

Its appearance is due to unfavorable conditions of upbringing and education, which prevent the correct formation of the child’s personality. We are talking about the so-called social genesis, when unfavorable conditions social environment arise very early, have a long-term effect, traumatizing the child’s psyche, accompanied by psychosomatic disorders, vegetative disorders. K.S. Lebedinskaya emphasizes that this type of mental development delay should be distinguished from pedagogical neglect, which is largely due to shortcomings in the child’s learning process in kindergarten or school.

The development of the personality of a child with mental retardation of psychogenic origin follows three main options.

The first option is mental instability, which arises as a consequence of hypoprotection. The child is brought up in conditions of neglect. Disadvantages of upbringing are manifested in the absence of a sense of duty, responsibility, adequate forms of social behavior, when, for example, in difficult situations he fails to cope with the affect. The family as a whole does not stimulate the child’s mental development and does not support him cognitive interests. Against the background of insufficient knowledge and ideas about the surrounding reality, which prevents the assimilation of school knowledge, these children display features of pathological immaturity of the emotional and volitional spheres: affective lability, impulsiveness, increased suggestibility.

The second option - in which overprotection is expressed - pampering upbringing, when the child is not instilled with the traits of independence, initiative, responsibility, and conscientiousness. Often this happens with late born children. Against the background of psychogenic infantilism, in addition to the inability to exert volition, the child is characterized by egocentrism, reluctance to work systematically, an attitude towards constant help, and the desire to always be looked after.

The third option is an unstable parenting style with elements of emotional and physical violence in the family. Its occurrence is provoked by the parents themselves, who rudely and cruelly treat the child. One or both parents may be oppressive and aggressive towards their own son or daughter. Against the background of such intrafamily relationships, pathological personality traits of a child with mental retardation are gradually formed: timidity, fearfulness, anxiety, indecisiveness, lack of independence, lack of initiative, deceit, resourcefulness and, often, insensitivity to the grief of others, which leads to significant problems of socialization.

Delayed mental development of cerebral-organic origin.

The last type of mental retardation among those considered occupies the main place within the boundaries of this deviation. It occurs most often in children and it also causes in children the most pronounced disturbances in their emotional-volitional and cognitive activity generally.

This type combines signs of immaturity of the child’s nervous system and signs of partial damage to a number of mental functions. She identifies two main clinical and psychological options for mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin.

In the first option, traits of immaturity in the emotional sphere, such as organic infantilism, predominate. If encephalopathic symptoms are noted, they are represented by mild cerebrasthenic and neurosis-like disorders. higher mental functions at the same time, they are insufficiently formed, depleted and deficient in the control of voluntary activity.

In the second option, symptoms of damage dominate: “there are persistent encephalopathic disorders, partial disorders of cortical functions and severe neurodynamic disorders (inertia, tendency to perseveration). The regulation of the child’s mental activity is disrupted not only in the area of control, but also in the area of programming cognitive activity. It leads to low level mastery of all kinds of voluntary activity. The child’s development of object-manipulative, speech, play, productive and educational activities is delayed.

Forecast of mental retardation of cerebral-organic genesis in to a large extent depends on the state of higher cortical functions and the type of age-related dynamics of its development. As noted by I.F. Markovskaya, with the predominance of general neurodynamic disorders, the prognosis is quite favorable.

When they are combined with a pronounced deficiency of individual cortical functions, a massive psychological and pedagogical correction is required, carried out in a specialized kindergarten. Primary persistent and extensive disorders of programming, control and initiation of voluntary types of mental activity require distinguishing them from mental retardation and other serious mental disorders.

Each of these types of mental retardation has its own clinical and psychological structure, its own characteristics of emotional immaturity and cognitive impairment, and is often complicated by a number of painful symptoms - somatic, encephalopathic, neurological. In many cases these painful signs cannot be regarded only as complicating, since they play a significant pathogenetic role in the formation of the ZPR itself.

The presented clinical types of the most persistent forms of mental retardation mainly differ from each other precisely in the peculiarities of the structure and the nature of the relationship between the two main components of this developmental anomaly: the structure of infantilism and the characteristics of the development of mental functions.

Unlike mental retardation, in which the mental functions themselves suffer - generalization, comparison, analysis, synthesis - with mental retardation, the prerequisites for intellectual activity suffer. These include such mental processes as attention, perception, the sphere of images and representations, visual-motor coordination, phonemic hearing and others.

When examining children with mental retardation in conditions that are comfortable for them and in the process of targeted education and training, children are capable of fruitful cooperation with adults. They accept the help of an adult and even the help of a more advanced peer well. This support is even more effective if it is in the form of play tasks and is focused on the child’s involuntary interest in the activities being carried out.

Playful presentation of tasks increases the productivity of children with mental retardation, while for mentally retarded preschoolers it can serve as a reason for the child to involuntarily slip from completing the task. This happens especially often if the proposed task is at the limit of the capabilities of a mentally retarded child.

Children with mental retardation have an interest in object-manipulative and play activities. The play activity of children with mental retardation, in contrast to that of mentally retarded preschoolers, is more emotional in nature. It lacks its own plan, imagination, and the ability to imagine the situation mentally. Unlike normally developing preschoolers, children with mental retardation do not move to the level of role-playing play without special training, but “get stuck” at the level story game. At the same time, their mentally retarded peers remain at the level of object-game actions.

Children with mental retardation are characterized by greater intensity of emotions, which allows them to concentrate for a longer period of time on completing tasks that arouse their immediate interest. Moreover, the more the child is interested in completing the task, the higher the results of his activity. A similar phenomenon is not observed in mentally retarded children. The emotional sphere of mentally retarded preschoolers is not developed, and overly playful presentation of tasks, as already mentioned, often distracts the child from solving the task itself and makes it difficult to achieve the goal.

Most children with mental retardation of preschool age varying degrees are proficient in visual arts. Mentally retarded preschoolers do not develop visual activity without special training. Such a child stops at the level of prerequisites for object images, i.e. at the level of scribbling. At best, some children have graphic stamps - schematic images of houses, “cephalopod” images of a person, letters, numbers, chaotically scattered across the plane of a sheet of paper.

Thus, we can conclude that mental retardation (MDD) is one of the most common forms mental disorders. It's a violation normal pace mental development. The term “delay” emphasizes the temporary nature of the disorder, that is, the level of psychophysical development as a whole may not correspond passport age child. Specific manifestations of mental retardation in a child depend on the causes and time of its occurrence, the degree of deformation of the affected function, and its significance in the overall system of mental development.

Thus, we can identify the following most important groups of reasons that can cause PPD:

Biological reasons that prevent normal and timely maturation of the brain;

A general lack of communication with others, causing a delay in the child’s assimilation of social experience;

Lack of full-fledged, age-appropriate activities that give the child the opportunity to effectively “appropriate” social experience and timely formation of internal mental actions;

Social deprivation that prevents timely mental development.

All deviations in such children from the nervous system are variable and diffuse and are temporary. Unlike mental retardation, with mental retardation, the intellectual defect is reversible.

This definition reflects both biological and social factors of the emergence and development of such a state in which the full development of the organism is hampered, the formation of a personally developed individual is delayed, and the formation of a socially mature personality is ambiguous.

There are several classifications of ZPR:

G.E. Sukhareva;

Research by M.S. Pevzner and T.A. Vlasova, who identified two main forms of mental retardation:

· delayed mental development caused by mental and psychophysical infantilism (uncomplicated and complicated underdevelopment of cognitive activity and speech, where the main place is occupied by underdevelopment of the emotional-volitional sphere);

· mental retardation caused by prolonged asthenic and cerebrasthenic conditions.

V.V. Kovalev identifies four main forms of ZPR:

b dysontogenetic form of mental retardation;

b encephalopathic form of mental retardation;

b mental retardation due to underdevelopment of analyzers (blindness, deafness, underdevelopment of speech, etc.);

ь mental retardation caused by defects in upbringing and information deficit with early childhood(pedagogical neglect).

The most informative for psychologists and teachers is the classification of K.S. Lebedinskaya:

· mental retardation of constitutional origin;

· delayed mental development of somatogenic origin;

· mental retardation of psychogenic origin;

· mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin.

2. Features of the development of perception in children with mental retardation

2.1 Perception as cognitive mental process. Formation and development of perception

The problem of perception has been widely studied in Russian psychology. (E.N. Sokolov, M.D. Dvoryashina, N.A. Kudryavtseva, N.P. Sorokun, P.A. Shevarev, R.I. Govorova, etc.). Their research is aimed at revealing the basic patterns of reality display and analyzing the peculiarities of perception in preschool children. They say sensory abilities are functionality organism, providing a person’s sensation and perception of the surrounding world and himself. In the development of sensory abilities, the assimilation of sensory standards plays an important role.

Sensory standards - generally accepted samples external properties items. The seven colors of the spectrum and their shades of lightness and saturation act as sensory standards of color, and as standards of form - geometric figures, quantities - metric system of measures, etc.

Perception is a holistic reflection of objects, situations, phenomena that arise from the direct impact of physical stimuli on the receptor surfaces of the sense organs.

Perception is the reflection of objects or phenomena with their direct impact on the senses.

Perception is a reflection in a person’s consciousness of objects and phenomena as a whole that directly affect his sense organs, and not their individual properties, as happens with sensation.

Perception is a form of holistic mental reflection of objects or phenomena with their direct impact on the senses.

Combining all the definitions into one, we can conclude that:

Perception is the result of the activity of the system of analyzers. The primary analysis, which takes place in the receptors, is complemented by the complex analytical and synthetic activity of the brain sections of the analyzers. Unlike sensations, in the processes of perception, an image of a holistic object is formed by reflecting the totality of its properties. However, the image of perception is not reduced to a simple sum of sensations, although it includes them in its composition. In fact, the perception of whole objects or situations is much more complicated. In addition to sensations, the process of perception involves previous experience, processes of comprehension of what is perceived, i.e. the process of perception includes mental processes of an even higher level, such as memory and thinking. Therefore, perception is very often called the human perceptual system.

If sensations are located in ourselves, then the perceived properties of objects, their images, are localized in space. This process characteristic of perception is called objectification.

As a result of perception, an image is formed that includes a complex of various interrelated sensations attributed by human consciousness to an object, phenomenon, or process.

The possibility of perception presupposes the subject's ability not only to respond to a sensory stimulus, but also to recognize the corresponding sensory quality as a property of a certain object. To do this, the object must be distinguished as a relatively stable source of influences emanating from it on the subject and as a possible object of the subject’s actions directed at it. Therefore, the perception of an object presupposes on the part of the subject not only the presence of an image, but also a certain effective attitude that arises only as a result of a fairly highly developed tonic activity (cerebellum and cortex), regulating motor tone and providing a state of active rest necessary for observation. Perception therefore presupposes quite high development not only sensory, but also the motor apparatus.

So, in order for a certain object to be perceived, it is necessary to perform some kind of counter-activity in relation to it, aimed at studying it, constructing and clarifying the image. The image that emerges as a result of the perception process presupposes the interaction and coordinated work of several analyzers at once. Depending on which of them works more actively, processes more information, receives the most significant signs, indicating the properties of the perceived object, distinguish types of perception. Four analyzers - visual, auditory, skin and muscle - most often act as leaders in the process of perception. Accordingly, visual, auditory, tactile perception is distinguished.

Perception, thus, acts as a meaningful (including decision-making) and designated (associated with speech) synthesis of various sensations obtained from integral objects or complex phenomena perceived as a whole. Synthesis appears in the form of an image of a given object or phenomenon, which is formed during their active reflection.

Subjectivity, integrity, constancy and categoricality (meaningfulness and designation) are the main properties of the image that develop in the process and result of perception.

Objectivity is a person’s ability to perceive the world not in the form of a set of unrelated sensations, but in the form of objects separated from each other that have properties that cause these sensations.

The perception of objects occurs mainly due to the perception of shape, since it is the most reliable sign of a thing, remaining unchanged when the color, size, and position of the object changes. Shape refers to the characteristic outlines and relative position of the details of an object. The form can be difficult to distinguish, and not only because of the complex outlines of the thing itself. The perception of form can be influenced by many other objects that are usually in the field of view and can form the most bizarre combinations. Sometimes it is not clear whether a given part belongs to this object or another, what object these parts form. Numerous illusions of perception are built on this, when an object is perceived not as it really is, according to objective characteristics (larger or smaller, lighter or heavier).

The integrity of perception is expressed in the fact that the image of perceived objects is not given in a fully finished form with all necessary elements, but, as it were, is mentally completed to some integral form based on a large set of elements. This also happens if some details of an object are not perceived by the human senses directly at a given moment in time.

Constancy is defined as the ability to perceive objects relatively constant in shape, color and size, a number of other parameters, regardless of changing physical conditions perception.

The categorial nature of human perception is manifested in the fact that it is of a generalized nature, and we designate each perceived object with a word-concept, refer to a certain class. In accordance with this class, we are looking for signs in the perceived object that are characteristic of all objects. of this class and expressed in the scope and content of this concept.

The described properties of objectivity, integrity, constancy and categorization of perception are not inherent in a person from birth, they gradually add up to life experience, are partly a natural consequence of the work of analyzers, the synthetic activity of the brain. Observation and experimental studies testify, for example, to the effect of color on the apparent size of an object: white and generally light objects appear larger than their equal black or dark objects, relative illumination affects the apparent distance of objects. The distance or angle of view from which we perceive an image or object affects its apparent color.

Each perception includes a reproduced past experience, the thinking of the perceiver, and, in a certain sense, also his feelings and emotions. Reflecting objective reality, perception does not do so passively, because it simultaneously refracts the entire mental life of the specific personality of the perceiver.

If a coordinated action directed at an object, on the one hand, presupposes the perception of an object, then, in turn, the perception of awareness of the objects of reality opposing the subject presupposes the ability not only to automatically respond to a sensory stimulus, but also to operate objects in coordinated actions. In particular, for example, the perception of the spatial arrangement of things is formed in the process of real motor acquisition through grasping movements and then movement.

Formation and development of perception.

In the first months of a child’s life, we can only speak with a fair degree of doubt about the existence of his perception as a complex form of a holistic reflection of the objects of reality.

Such a property of perception as objectivity, i.e. the attribution of sensations and images to objects of reality arises only at the beginning early age, about one year.

When studying visual perception in children, it was found that stimuli that are close to each other in space are combined into complexes much more often than stimuli that are distant from each other. This gives rise to typical mistakes that infants make. A child may, for example, grab a tower of cubes by the topmost cube and be very surprised to find that only one cube, and not the entire tower as a whole, is in his hand. A child of this age may also make numerous and assiduous attempts to take a flower from his mother's dress, not realizing that the flower forms part of a flat pattern.

Constancy of perception also appears only by 11-12 months, with the accumulation of experience in contemplative and practical activities with objects in different situations.

From the second year of life, in connection with the mastery of the simplest instrumental actions, the child’s perception changes. Having received the opportunity and learned to act with one object on another, the child turns out to be capable of foreseeing the dynamic relationships between own body and the objective situation, as well as interactions between objects (for example, anticipating the possibility of pulling a ball through a hole, moving one object with the help of another, etc.).

In the third year of life, a child can distinguish such simple shapes as a circle, oval, square, rectangle, triangle, polygon, as well as all the main colors of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

From about one year of age, the child begins the process of active cognition of the world around him on the basis of experimentation, during which the hidden properties of this world are revealed. From one to two years the child uses various options performing the same action, demonstrating the ability for operant learning, the child acquires the ability to solve a problem not only by trial and error, but also by guessing, i.e. sudden direct discretion to solve the problem that has arisen. This becomes possible, according to J. Piaget, thanks to the internal coordination of sensorimotor circuits and the internalization of action, i.e. its transfer from the external to the internal plane.

During the transition from early to preschool age, i.e. in the period from 3 to 7 years, under the influence of productive, design and artistic activities, the child develops complex types perceptual analytical-synthetic activity, in particular the ability to mentally dissect a visible object into parts and then combine them into a single whole, before such operations are carried out in practical terms. Perceptual images related to the shape of objects also acquire new content. In addition to the outline, the structure of objects, spatial features and relationships of its parts are also highlighted.

Perceptual actions are formed in learning, and their development goes through a number of stages. In the first stage, the formation process begins with practical, material actions performed with unfamiliar objects. At this stage, which poses new perceptual tasks for the child, the necessary corrections are made directly to material actions, which must be made to form an adequate image. The best results of perception are obtained when the child is offered for comparison so-called sensory standards, which also appear in external, material form. With them, the child has the opportunity to compare the perceived object in the process of working with it.

At the second stage, the sensory processes themselves, restructured under the influence of practical activity, become perceptual actions. These actions are now carried out with the help of the corresponding movements of the receptor apparatus and anticipate the performance of practical actions with perceived objects. At this stage, writes L.A. Wenger, children get acquainted with the spatial properties of objects with the help of detailed orienting-exploratory movements of the hand and eye.

At the third stage, perceptual actions become even more hidden, curtailed, reduced, their external, effector links disappear, and perception from the outside begins to seem like a passive process. In fact, this process is still active, but it takes place internally, mainly only in the consciousness and at the subconscious level in the child. Children get the opportunity to quickly recognize the properties of objects of interest, to distinguish one object from another, to find out the connections and relationships existing between them.

Thus, we can conclude that perception acts as a meaningful (including decision-making) and signified (associated with speech) synthesis of various sensations received from integral objects or complex phenomena perceived as a whole. Synthesis appears in the form of an image of a given object or phenomenon, which is formed during their active reflection.

At primary school age, those basic characteristics of perception are fixed and developed, the need for which is associated with entering school.

Indeed, children's acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities begins with perception. Therefore, in order to help a child achieve success in learning, the teacher needs to study various aspects of his perception and ensure a high level of development of the main types of perception and such features as objectivity, integrity, awareness, and ingenuity of perception. Along with the development of perception, the child’s memory improves, which is expressed in its objectivity and arbitrariness.

2.2 Features of the development of perception in children with mental retardation

The prevalence of visual and hearing impairments among children with mental retardation is no higher than among normally developing children. You will see a child with glasses in a special kindergarten for children of this category no more often than among normally developing peers. This means that there are no primary sensory deficiencies in children of this category. At the same time, the presence of perception deficiencies is quite obvious. Even A. Strauss and L. Letinen, in their work on children with minimal brain damage, wrote that these children “listen, but do not hear, look, but do not see”, thus generalizing the lack of purposefulness of perception found in children, leading to its fragmentation and lack of differentiation.

Causes of impaired perception in children with mental retardation:

With mental retardation, the integrative activity of the cerebral cortex, cerebral hemispheres is disrupted and, as a result, the coordinated work of various analyzer systems is disrupted: hearing, vision, motor system, which leads to disruption of systemic mechanisms of perception.

Lack of attention in children with mental retardation.

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

Features of perception:

Insufficient completeness and accuracy of perception is associated with a violation of attention, mechanisms of arbitrariness.

Lack of focus and organization of attention.

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

Low level of analytical perception. The child does not think about the information he perceives (“I see, but I don’t think.”).

Decreased perceptual activity. In the process of perception, the search function is impaired, the child does not try to look closely, the material is perceived superficially.

The most grossly impaired are more complex forms of perception, requiring the participation of several analyzers and having a complex nature - visual perception, hand-eye coordination.

A number of authors note in children with mental retardation difficulties in distinguishing a figure from a background, difficulties in distinguishing figures that are similar in shape and, if necessary, isolating the details of the object in question, deficiencies in the perception of the depth of space, which makes it difficult for children to determine the distance of objects, and in general, deficiencies in visual-spatial skills. orientation. Particular difficulties are found in the perception of the location of individual elements in complex images. There are difficulties in recognizing visually perceived real objects and images associated with these shortcomings. Later, when learning to read begins, perception deficiencies manifest themselves in the confusion of letters and their elements that are similar in outline.

The described deficiencies in perception are not associated with primary sensory defects, but appear at the level of complex sensory-perceptual functions, i.e. are a consequence of the immaturity of analytical and synthetic activity in visual system, and especially in cases where other analyzers are involved in visual perception, primarily motor. That is why the most significant lag is observed in preschool children with mental retardation in the perception of space, which is based on the integration of visual and motor sensations.

An even greater lag can be traced in the formation of visual-auditory integration, which has vital importance when teaching literacy. This retardation undoubtedly manifests itself in the difficulties these children have in learning to read and write.

There are no difficulties in perceiving simple auditory influences. There are some difficulties in the differentiation of speech sounds (which indicates the shortcomings phonemic hearing), most clearly speaking in difficult conditions: with the rapid pronunciation of words, in polysyllabic and close-pronunciated words. Children have difficulty identifying sounds in words. These difficulties, reflecting the insufficiency of analytical and synthetic activity in the sound analyzer, are revealed when children are taught to read and write.

Even before school, children accumulate a large number of ideas about the shape and size of various objects. These representations are a necessary basis for the formation of important geometric representations in the future, and then concepts. Constructing various buildings from “cubes”, students pay attention to the comparative sizes of objects (expressing this with the words “more”, “less”, “wider”, “narrower”, “shorter”, “higher”, “lower”, etc. .).

In play and practical activities, there is also an acquaintance with the shape of objects and their individual parts. For example, children immediately notice that a ball (sphere) has the property of rolling, but a box (parallelepiped) does not have this property. Students intuitively associate these physical properties with the shape of bodies. But since the experience of students and the accumulation of terminology is random, an important task of teaching becomes the clarification of accumulated ideas and the assimilation of the corresponding terminology. To this end, it is necessary to systematically offer a variety of examples. The relationship between objects, expressed by the words “same”, “different”, “larger”, “smaller” and others, are established either on real objects (strips of paper, sticks, balls, etc.) or on their images (drawings, drawings). Each of the examples given for this purpose should clearly identify the main feature by which these relationships are clarified. For example, when figuring out which of two shelves is “larger,” it is important to ensure that both sticks are the same thickness (or the same length). In all cases, when making comparisons, it is necessary to select items for which the “sign of comparison” is clearly visible, unambiguous and can be easily identified by the student.

Mental retardation (MDD). Perception of shape by children with mental retardation

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