Schoolchildren with mental retardation. Features of the behavior of younger students with disabilities

Made by: Primachok

Anna

Petrovna

year 2013

Methodological presentation on the topic:

"Junior students with a delay mental development»

Introduction.

AT public school a significant number of children who are already in primary school do not cope with the training program and have difficulties in communication. This problem is especially acute for children with mental retardation. The problem of learning difficulties for these children is one of the most urgent psychological and pedagogical problems.

Children with mental retardation entering school have a number of specific features. In general, they do not have the skills, abilities and knowledge necessary for mastering the program material, which normally developing children usually master in the preschool period. As a result, children are unable to special assistance) master counting, reading and writing. It is difficult for them to comply with school norms of behavior. They experience difficulties in the arbitrary organization of activities: they do not know how to consistently follow the instructions of the teacher, switch at his direction from one task to another. The difficulties they are experiencing are exacerbated by the weakening of their nervous system: students quickly get tired, their performance decreases, and sometimes they simply stop performing the activities they have begun.

The task of the psychologist is to establish the level of development of the child, determine its compliance or non-compliance with age norms, as well as identify pathological features development. The psychologist, on the one hand, can give a useful diagnostic material the attending physician, and on the other hand, can choose methods of correction, give recommendations regarding the child.

Deviations in the mental development of children of primary school age are usually correlated with the concept of "school failure". To determine deviations in the mental development of underachieving schoolchildren who do not have mental retardation, deep violations sensory systems, lesions of the nervous system, but at the same time they lag behind their peers in learning, most often we use the term "mental retardation"

1. Definition of ZPR

Mental retardation (MPD)- a concept that speaks not of persistent and not irreversible mental underdevelopment, but of a slowdown in its pace, which is more often found when entering school and is expressed in the lack of a general stock of knowledge, limited ideas, immaturity of thinking, low intellectual focus, the predominance of gaming interests, fast oversaturation in intellectual activity. Unlike children suffering from oligophrenia, these children are quite quick-witted within the limits of available knowledge, and are much more productive in using help. At the same time, in some cases, developmental delay will come to the fore. emotional sphere(various types of infantilism), 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.

Impaired mental function- violation of the normal pace of mental development, when certain mental functions (memory,Attention,thinking,emotional-volitional sphere) lag behind in their development from the accepted psychological norms for a given age. ZPR, as a psychological and pedagogical diagnosis, is made only at preschool and primary school age, if by the end of this period there are signs of underdevelopment of mental functions, then we are talking aboutconstitutional infantilismor aboutmental retardation.

These children had the potential to learn and develop, but different reasons it was not implemented, and this led to the emergence of new problems in study, behavior, and health. The range of definitions of mental retardation is quite wide: from "specific learning disability", "slow learning" to "borderline intellectual insufficiency". In this regard, one of the tasks of psychological examination is to distinguish between ZPR andpedagogical neglect and intellectual disability (mental retardation).

Pedagogical neglect - this is a state in the development of the child, which is characterized by a lack of knowledge, skills due to a lack of intellectual information. Pedagogical neglect is not a pathological phenomenon. It is connected not with the insufficiency of the nervous system, but with defects in education.

Mental retardation - these are qualitative changes in the entire psyche, the entire personality as a whole, resulting from the transferred organic damage to the central nervous system. Not only the intellect suffers, but also emotions, will, behavior, physical development.

An anomaly of development, defined as ZPR, occurs much more often than other, more severe disorders of mental development. According to various data, up to 30% of children in the population have some form of degree of ZPR and their number is increasing. There are also reasons to believe that this percentage is higher, especially in recent times.

With mental retardationthe development of the child is characterized by uneven disturbances of various mental functions. Wherein logical thinking can be more preserved compared to memory, attention, mental performance. In addition, unlike mental retardation, children with mental retardation lack that inertia mental processes observed in mental retardation. Children with mental retardation are able not only to accept and use help, but also to transfer the learned skills of mental activity to other situations. With the help of an adult, they can perform the intellectual tasks offered to them at a level close to the norm.

2. Causes of CRA and their characteristics.

The causes of mental retardation can be severe infectious diseases mothers during pregnancy, toxicosis of pregnancy, chronic fetal hypoxia due to placental insufficiency, trauma during pregnancy and childbirth, genetic factors, asphyxia, neuroinfections, serious illnesses, especially in early age nutritional deficiencies and chronic somatic diseases, as well as brain injuries in early period child's life, initial low level functionality as idiosyncrasy development of the child ("cerebrosthenic infantilism" - according to V.V. Kovalev), severe emotional disorders neurotic character, associated, as a rule, with extremely adverse conditions early development. As a result of the unfavorable influence of these factors on the central nervous system of the child, a kind of suspension or distorted development of certain structures of the cerebral cortex occurs. The shortcomings of the social environment in which the baby is brought up are of great and sometimes decisive importance here. Here in the first place are the lack of maternal affection, human attention, lack of care for the baby. It is for these reasons that mental retardation is so common in children who are brought up in orphanages, round-the-clock nurseries. In the same difficult situation are children left to themselves, brought up in families where parents abuse alcohol, lead a hectic lifestyle.

According to the American Association for the Study of Brain Injuries, up to 50% of children with learning difficulties are children who suffered a head injury between birth and 3-4 years of age.

It is known how often small children fall; often this happens when there are no adults nearby, and sometimes the adults present do not give special significance such falls. But recent research by the American Brain Injury Association has shown that this seemingly minor traumatic brain injury in early childhood can even lead to irreversible consequences. This happens when there is a compression of the brain stem or stretching nerve fibers, which can manifest itself in more pronounced cases throughout life.

3. Classification of children with mental retardation.

Let us dwell on the classification of children with mental retardation. Our clinicians distinguish among them (classification by K.S. Lebedinskaya) four groups.

The first group is mental retardation of constitutional origin. This is a harmonic mental and psychophysical infantilism. These children are already outwardly different. They are more slender, often their growth is less than average and the face retains the features of an earlier age, even when they are already becoming schoolchildren. In these children, the lag in the development of the emotional sphere is especially pronounced. They are, as it were, on more early stage development compared to chronological age. They have a greater severity of emotional manifestations, the brightness of emotions and at the same time their instability and lability, they are very characterized by easy transitions from laughter to tears and vice versa. The children of this group have very pronounced play interests, which prevail even at school age.

Harmonic infantilism is a uniform manifestation of infantilism in all spheres. Emotions lag behind in development, both speech development and the development of intellectual and volitional sphere. In some cases, the physical lag may not be expressed - only mental is observed, and sometimes there is also a psychophysical lag in general. All these forms are combined into one group. Psychophysical infantilism sometimes has a hereditary nature. In some families, it is noted that parents in childhood had the corresponding traits.

The second group is mental retardation of somatogenic origin, which is associated with long-term severe somatic diseases in young years. It can be heavy allergic diseases (bronchial asthma, for example), diseases digestive system. Prolonged dyspepsia during the first year of life inevitably leads to a developmental delay. Cardiovascular insufficiency, chronic inflammation of the lungs, kidney disease are often found in the anamnesis of children with mental retardation of somatogenic origin.

It is clear that a poor somatic condition cannot but affect the development of the central nervous system, delaying its maturation. Such children spend months in hospitals, which, of course, creates conditions for sensory deprivation and also does not contribute to their development.

The third group - mental retardation psychogenic origin. I must say that such cases are recorded quite rarely, as well as mental retardation of somatogenic origin. There must be very unfavorable somatic or microsocial conditions for the mental development of these two forms to be retarded. Much more often we observe a combination of organic insufficiency of the central nervous system with somatic weakness or with the influence of unfavorable conditions of family education.

Delay in mental development of psychogenic origin is associated with unfavorable conditions of education, causing a violation of the formation of the child's personality. These conditions are neglect, often combined with parental cruelty, or overprotection, which is also an extremely unfavorable situation for upbringing in early childhood. Neglect leads to mental instability, impulsiveness, explosiveness and, of course, lack of initiative, to a lag in intellectual development. Overprotection leads to the formation of a distorted, weakened personality, such children usually manifest egocentrism, lack of independence in activities, lack of focus, inability to exert volition, selfishness.

In the absence of organic or pronounced functional insufficiency of the central nervous system, the lag in the development of children belonging to the three forms listed can in many cases be overcome in the conditions of an ordinary school (especially if the teacher takes an individual approach to such children and provides them with differentiated assistance in accordance with their needs). features and needs).

The last, fourth, group - the most numerous - is a mental retardation of cerebral-organic genesis.

Causes - various pathological situations of pregnancy and childbirth: birth trauma, asphyxia, infections during pregnancy, intoxication, as well as injuries and diseases of the central nervous system in the first months and years of life. Especially dangerous is the period up to 2 years.

Injuries and diseases of the central nervous system can lead to what is called organic infantilism, in contrast to harmonic and psychophysical infantilism, the causes of which are not always clear.

Conclusion. In children with mental retardation, there is a lagin the development of attention, perception, thinking, memory, speech, voluntary regulation of activity and other functions. Moreover, according to a number of indicators of the current level of development, children with mental retardation are often close to mental retardation. But at the same time, they have much greater potential. Special psychology for children with mental retardation is to notice in time given fact and make every effort to ensure that the child does not feel like an inferior person.Bibliography. 1. V. I. Lubovsky, T. V. Rozanova, L. I. Solntseva « Special psychology":Proc. allowance for students. 20052. Kostenkova Yu.A. Children with mental retardation: features of speech, writing, reading2004. 3. Markovskaya I.F. Impaired mental function.1993. 4. Teaching children with mental retardation (a manual for teachers) / Ed. V.I. Lubovsky. - Smolensk: Pedagogy, 1994. -110 s.

Review to the methodological presentation by Anna Petrovna Pryymachok, teacher primary school MBOU secondary school No. 5 of Irkutsk

GNOSTIC PROCESSES

FOR YOUNGER SCHOOLCHILDREN

MENTALLY RELATED

The main goal of psychological correction of younger schoolchildren with mental retardation is to optimize their intellectual activity by stimulating their mental processes and forming positive motivation for cognitive activity.

important principle psychological correction cognitive processes and the personality of children is to take into account the form and severity of mental retardation.

For example, in children with psychophysical infantilism in the structure of a cognitive defect, the determining role belongs to the underdevelopment of the motivational side of learning activity. Therefore, the psycho-correctional process should be aimed at the development of cognitive motives. And in children with mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin, there is a total underdevelopment of the prerequisites for intelligence: visual-spatial perception, memory, attention. In this regard, the correctional process should focus on the formation of these mental processes, on the development of skills of self-control and regulation of activity.

For the convenience of analyzing disorders of cognitive activity, it is advisable to single out its three main blocks - motivational, regulatory and control block - and the tasks of the psycho-corrective process corresponding to these disorders (see Table 22).

Chapter 4 Psychological help children with mental retardation

Table 22 Directions and tasks of psychological correction of children with various forms of mental retardation

Psychocorrective classes with children with mental retardation for the development of cognitive processes can be carried out both individually and in a group. The unity of requirements for the child on the part of the teacher, psychologist and other specialists is important. This is successfully achieved with careful observance of the daily regimen, a clear organization of the child's daily life, excluding the possibility of not completing the actions begun by the child.

As noted above, in all forms of mental retardation, there is an underdevelopment of attention. It was also shown that different properties of attention have a different impact on the success of teaching children in different subjects. For example, in the study of mathematics, the leading role belongs to the volume of attention, the success of mastering reading is associated with the stability of attention, and the assimilation of the Russian language depends on the accuracy of the distribution of attention. Knowledge of these regularities is of great importance in the organization of the psycho-corrective process and the selection of psychotechnical techniques. For example, to form the distribution of attention, children can be presented with texts, and for the development of volume - numbers and various mathematical tasks.

In addition, different properties of attention develop unequally and are manifested differently when various forms ZPR. For example, studies show that in children with simple psychophysical infantilism, somatogenic and psychogenic forms ZPR attention span does not differ significantly from healthy children (Safadi Khasan, 1997; I. I. Mamaychuk, 2000). The distribution and stability of attention undergo significant changes not only in children with mental retardation of cerebral-organic origin, but also in children with other forms of mental retardation (Safadi Hasan, 1997; and others).

Voluntary attention as a specific higher mental function manifests itself in the child in the ability to control and regulate the course of the activity and its results. In this regard, there is a need for psychological correction of attention in children in the process of activities available to them (playing, learning, communication). The systematic use of the psychotechnical techniques described below contributes to the formation of the properties of attention in children.

The effectiveness of psychological correction of attention in children with mental retardation is largely determined by individual typological characteristics, in particular, the properties of their higher nervous activity. In psychology, it has been established that different combinations of dash properties were not set, but syllables were pronounced with a clear separation (voice) and successively checked. The sound division of syllables became shorter and shorter and soon reduced to stresses on individual syllables. After that, the word was read and checked by syllables to oneself (“the first one is correct, the second one is not, it is omitted here ... rearranged”). Only at the last stage did we proceed to the fact that the child read the whole word to himself and gave him overall rating(correct - incorrect; if incorrect, then explain why). After that, the transition to reading the entire phrase with its assessment, and then the entire paragraph (with the same assessment) was not difficult ”(P. Ya. Galperin, 1987, pp. 97-98).

An important point in the process of forming attention is working with a special card on which the rules for checking are written out, the order of operations when checking the text. The presence of such a card is a necessary material support for mastering the full-fledged action of control. As the action of control is internalized and curtailed, the obligatory use of such a card disappears. To generalize the formed control action, it is then worked out on a wider material (pictures, patterns, sets of letters and numbers). After that, when special conditions are created, control is transferred from the situation of experimental learning to the actual practice of learning activities. Thus, the method of phased formation allows you to get a full-fledged control action, that is, the formation of attention.

The essence of the method is to identify deficiencies in attention when detecting errors in the text. The performance of this task does not require special knowledge and skills from children, but is ensured by the nature of the errors included in the text: substitution of letters, substitution of words in a sentence, elementary semantic errors.

For example, children are offered the following texts:

“Vegetables did not grow in the Far South of our country, but now they are growing. There are a lot of carrots in the garden. They didn’t breed near Moscow, but now they breed. Vanya was hanging around the field, but suddenly stopped. Vyut nest rooks on trees. There were many toys hanging on the Christmas tree. Hunter in the evening from hunting. Rai's notebook has good marks. Children played on the school playground. The boy was riding a horse. A grasshopper is striding in the grass. In winter, an apple tree bloomed in the garden. “The old swans bowed their mountain necks before him. In winter, apple trees bloom in the garden. Adults and children crowded on the shore. Below them was an icy desert. In response, I nod my hand at him. The sun reached the tops of the trees and tried behind them. Weeds are effervescent and prolific. On the table was a map of our city. The plane is here to help people. Soon I succeeded in the car ”(P. Ya. -Galperin, S. L. Kobylnitskaya, 1974).

The work is carried out as follows. Each child is given a text printed on a piece of paper and an instruction is given: “There are various errors in the text that you received, including semantic ones. Find them and fix them." Each student works independently and is given a set amount of time to complete the task.

When analyzing the results of this work, it is important not only to quantify the found corrected and not detected errors, but also how the students perform the work: they immediately turn on in task, detecting and correcting errors in the course of reading; they cannot turn on for a long time, at the first reading they do not find a single error; correcting the right for the wrong, etc.

It is important psychological correction individual properties of attention, among which stand out: the amount of attention, distribution of attention, stability of attention, concentration of attention, switching of attention.

Since most of the mental functions (speech, spatial representations, thinking) have a complex structure and are based on the interaction of several functional systems, then the creation of such interactions in children with mental retardation is not only slowed down, but also proceeds differently than in normally developing peers. Consequently, the corresponding mental functions are not formed in the same way as in normal development.

At junior schoolchildren with ZPR observed:

Low degree of development of perception. This is manifested in the need for a longer period of time to receive and process sensory information; difficulties in recognizing objects in an unusual position, schematic and contour images; limited, fragmented knowledge of these children about the world around them.

Similar properties of objects are perceived by them in most cases as identical. Children of this category do not always recognize and often confuse similar letters and their individual elements, often misperceive combinations of letters, etc. According to some foreign psychologists, in particular G. Spionek, developmental delay visual perception is one of the reasons for the difficulties that these children face in the learning process.

On the initial stage systematic training in younger schoolchildren with mental retardation reveals the inferiority of subtle forms of auditory and visual perception, insufficiency in planning, and in the implementation of complex motor programs.

Spatial representations are insufficiently formed: orientation in the directions of space for a sufficiently long period of time is carried out at the level of practical actions; often there are difficulties in the synthesis and spatial analysis of the situation. Since the formation of spatial representations is closely related to the development of constructive thinking, the formation of representations of this type in younger students with mental retardation also has its own characteristics.

For example, when folding complex geometric shapes and patterns, children with mental retardation are often unable to implement a full-fledged analysis of the form, establish symmetry, the identity of the parts of the constructed figures, place the structure on a plane, and combine it into one whole. But, unlike the mentally retarded, children with mental retardation usually perform simple patterns correctly.

Features of attention: instability, confusion, poor concentration, difficulty switching.

A decrease in the ability to distribute and focus attention is especially evident in conditions when the task is carried out in the presence of simultaneously acting speech stimuli, which have a great emotional and semantic content for children.

Insufficient organization of attention is associated with poor development of children's intellectual activity, imperfection of skills and abilities of self-control, insufficient development of a sense of responsibility and interest in learning. In children with mental retardation, there is a slowdown and uneven development of attention stability, as well as wide range individual and age differences of this quality.

There are shortcomings in the analysis when performing tasks in conditions of increased speed of perception of the material, when the differentiation of such stimuli becomes difficult. The complication of working conditions leads to a significant slowdown in the execution of the task, but at the same time, the productivity of the activity decreases slightly.

The level of distribution of attention in younger schoolchildren with mental retardation increases abruptly in the third grade, in contrast to mentally retarded children, in whom it gradually increases with the transition to each subsequent grade. In children of this category, the development of attention switching occurs fairly evenly.

Correlative analysis reveals an insufficient relationship between switchability and other characteristics of attention in younger students with mental retardation, which in most cases manifests itself only in the first and third years of study.

Most researchers point out that the disadvantages voluntary attention(exhaustion, poor ability to maintain its stability) characterize cognitive activity during mental retardation.

Instability of attention and a decrease in working capacity in younger schoolchildren with mental retardation have personal manifestations. Thus, for some children, high performance and maximum attentional stress decrease as work is done; for other children, the greatest concentration of attention is already after the partial performance of the activity, that is, they need additional time to be included in the activity; the third group of children is characterized by periodic fluctuations in attention and uneven performance during the entire period of the task.

Deviations in the development of memory. There is instability and a pronounced decrease in the productivity of memorization; the predominance of visual memory over verbal; inability to organize one's work, low level of self-control in the process of memorization and reproduction; poor ability to rationally use memorization techniques; small volume and accuracy of memorization; low level of mediated memorization; the predominance of mechanical memorization over verbal-logical; among violations short term memory- increased retardation of traces under the influence of interference and internal interference (mutual influence of various mnemonic traces on each other); fast forgetting of material and low speed of memorization.

It is difficult for children in this category to master complex types memory. Thus, before the fourth grade, most of the students with mental retardation memorize the material mechanically, while their normally developing peers during this period (first-fourth) grade use arbitrary indirect memorization.

The lag in the development of cognitive activity begins with early forms thinking: visual-effective and visual-figurative. In younger schoolchildren, visual-effective thinking is the least disturbed; there is a lack of visual-figurative thinking.

Thus, during systematic learning, these children can safely group objects according to such visual signs like shape and color, but with great difficulty distinguish it as common features the size and material of objects, there are difficulties in abstracting one feature and its meaningful opposition to others, in the transition from one principle of classification to another.

The children of this group have poorly developed analytical and synthetic activity in all types of thinking.

When analyzing a phenomenon or an object, children name non-existent or superficial qualities with insufficient accuracy and completeness. Subsequently, younger students with mental retardation in the image are almost twice fewer signs than their normally developing peers.

The process of generalization of generic concepts mainly depends on the amount of specific material with which the child works. Generic concepts in younger schoolchildren with mental retardation are poorly differentiated, diffuse in nature. These children, as a rule, can reproduce this or that concept only after the presentation of a large number of corresponding objects or their images, while normally developing children can complete this task after the presentation of one or two objects.

In particular, children experience great difficulties when it is necessary to include the same object in various systems of generalizations that reflect the diverse and difficult relationships between the phenomena of the surrounding reality. Even the principle of activity discovered during the solution of a specific task cannot always be transferred to new conditions. One of the reasons for such erroneous decisions may be the incorrect actualization of generic concepts.

During the classification operation, the main difficulty for children is that they cannot mentally combine two or more features of a phenomenon or object. However, this activity can be quite successful if it is possible to practice with objects of classification.

At the beginning of school education in children with mental retardation, as a rule, the main mental operations are not sufficiently formed at the verbal-logical level. For children in this group, it is difficult to reach a logical conclusion from the two proposed premises. They do not have a hierarchy of concepts. Grouping tasks are performed by children at the level of figurative thinking, and not concrete conceptual, as it should be at a given age.

However, verbally formulated tasks that relate to situations based on the everyday experience of children, they solve for more high level than simple tasks based on visual material that children have not encountered before. For these children, tasks based on analogy are more accessible, in solving which it is possible to rely on a model, on their everyday experience. However, when solving such tasks, children make many mistakes due to insufficiently formed samples and their inadequate reproduction.

A large number of researchers note that in constructing logical judgments by analogy, children with mental retardation are closer to adequately developing children, and in terms of the ability to prove the truth of judgments and draw conclusions from premises, they are closer to mentally retarded children. For younger students with mental retardation, inertia of thinking is characteristic, which manifests itself in various forms.

For example, when teaching children, inert, inactive associations are created that cannot be changed. When moving from one system of skills and knowledge to another, students can apply proven methods without changing them, which ultimately leads to the difficulty of switching from one method of action to another.

Inertia manifests itself especially clearly when working with problematic tasks, the solution of which requires an independent search. Instead of understanding the task, finding an adequate way to solve it, in most cases, students reproduce the most familiar methods, thus a kind of substitution of the task is carried out and the ability to self-regulate does not develop, the motivation to avoid failures is not formed.

Another feature of the thinking of children with mental retardation is a decrease in cognitive activity. Some children almost do not ask questions about the phenomena of the surrounding reality and objects. These are passive, slow children with slow speech. Other children ask questions, mainly related to the external properties of the surrounding objects. Usually they are wordy, somewhat disinhibited.

Not enough level Cognitive activity during learning is also manifested in the fact that children in this category use the time allotted for completing the task inefficiently, make few assumptions before solving the problem.

In the process of memorization, a decrease in cognitive activity is manifested in the absence of effective use time, which is intended for initial orientation in the task, in the need for a constant urge to memorize, in the inability to use techniques and methods that can facilitate memorization, in a reduced level of self-control.

Insufficient cognitive activity is especially evident in relation to phenomena and objects that are outside the range defined by an adult. This is confirmed by the incompleteness and superficiality of knowledge about the objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality, which children acquire mainly from the media, books, and communication with adults.

The activity of younger schoolchildren with mental retardation is characterized by general disorganization, lack of unity of purpose, weak speech regulation, and impulsiveness; insufficient activity in all types of activity, especially spontaneous.

Having started work, children most often show indecision, ask questions that have already been voiced by the teacher or described in the textbook; sometimes they cannot understand the wording of the problem on their own.

Children experience serious difficulties when performing tasks with several instructions: as a rule, they do not grasp the meaning of the task as a whole, violate the sequence in work, and have difficulty switching from one technique to another. Children do not follow some instructions at all, and the presence of neighboring instructions may interfere with the correct execution of others. But the same instructions, presented separately, usually do not cause difficulties.

The educational activity of schoolchildren with mental retardation is characterized by the fact that the same student, when performing a task, can act both correctly and incorrectly. The combination of the correct performance of a task with an erroneous one may indicate that schoolchildren temporarily lose their instructions due to the complication of working conditions.

The insufficiency of the regulatory function of speech is manifested in the difficulties of children in the verbal designation of the actions performed, in the performance of tasks proposed by the speech instruction. In oral reports of children on the work done, they, as a rule, do not clearly indicate the sequence of actions performed, and at the same time often give a description of minor, minor points.

The children of this group violated the necessary step-by-step control over the performed activity, they often do not notice the inconsistency of their work with the proposed model, they do not find the mistakes they made, even if the manager asks them to check their work. Schoolchildren are rarely able to adequately evaluate their work and correctly motivate the assessment, which in most cases is too high.

When asked to explain why they evaluate their work in this way, the children respond thoughtlessly, do not realize and do not establish the connection between an unsuccessful result from an erroneously chosen method of activity, or incorrectly performed actions.

In younger schoolchildren with mental retardation, in most cases, there is a weakening of regulation at all levels of activity. Even if the child “accepted” the task, difficulties may arise in solving it, since its conditions as a whole are not analyzed, probable solutions are not outlined, the results obtained are not controlled, and the mistakes made by the child are not corrected.

Children with mental retardation experience difficulties when they need to concentrate in order to find a solution to a problem, which is also associated with a weak development of the emotional-volitional sphere. Because of this, they often have fluctuations in the level of activity and performance, a change in “non-working” and “working” states.

During the lesson, they can work no more than 12-15 minutes, and then fatigue sets in, attention and activity are significantly reduced, rash, impulsive actions occur, many corrections and errors appear in the work; there are frequent outbursts of irritation and even refusal to work in response to the instructions of the teacher.

So, educational and cognitive activity for schoolchildren with mental retardation is unattractive, there is a rapid satiety when performing tasks. Motivation and emotions correspond more younger age. Self-esteem is poorly differentiated. But, at the same time, there are no significant violations of mental processes.

The delay is largely associated with the emotional-volitional sphere of the personality, leads to the insufficiency of arbitrary regulation of thinking, concentration, and memorization. With the organization of assistance and regular encouragement, children with mental retardation demonstrate a sufficient level of achievements in the intellectual sphere.

In conclusion of the first chapter of the final qualification work, we note that educational activity- complex in its structure education. It includes:

Educational and cognitive motives;

training tasks and training operations that make up their operator content;

• - the control;
• - assessment.

Manifestations of mental retardation include delayed emotional-volitional maturation in the form of one or another variant of infantilism, and insufficiency, delayed development of cognitive activity, while the manifestations of this condition can be varied. A child with mental retardation, as it were, corresponds in his mental development to a younger age, but this correspondence is only external.

Rigorous mental research demonstrates specific features his mental activity, the source of which often lies in a mild organic deficiency of those brain systems that are responsible for the child's learning ability, for the possibility of his adaptation to school conditions. Its insufficiency is manifested, first of all, in the low cognitive ability of the child, which manifests itself, as a rule, in all areas of his mental activity.

It is difficult to call such a child inquisitive, as if he “does not see” and “does not hear” much in the world around him, does not try to understand, comprehend the events and phenomena taking place around him. This is due to the peculiarities of his perception, memory, thinking, attention, emotional-volitional sphere.