Articles from the journal of the mentally retarded. Deviations in mental development

the group consisted of 11 people, and the control group - 16 points were introduced: I category (satisfactory -

athletes, which then decreased to 14 points) - 3 points, candidate master of sports of Russia

lovek due to non-participation in competitions for various (good) - 4 points, master of sports of Russia (excellent reasons for two wrestlers. After weighing but) - 5 points.

determined for each the amount of weight loss Before the tournament in the control group skill

(from 2 to 3 kg) - on average 2.7 (2.680±0.095) kg and was slightly higher than in the experimental -

built graphs of weight loss with individual 3.57 and 3.36, respectively (differences are unreliable for each participant in the experiment step, ny). Performance at competitions revealed the following

but not more than 0.5 kg/day. The composition of the experimental results - the sportsmanship of the participant

group: 7 wrestlers of the 1st category and 4 candidates for wrestlers of the experimental group reliably (P

master of sports of Russia, and control - 8 candidates< 0.001) повысилось от 3.360±0.095 до 3.910±0.050

Comrade in the master of sports and 6 wrestlers of the 1st category. and reliable (P< 0.05) стал выше, чем в контроль-

After the official weigh-in before the competition group (3.71±0.07).

innovations to each of the participants in the experiment. In a special experiment, it was proved that the

a 15-minute recovery work technique for weight loss and recovery was carried out

procedure. wrestlers' working capacity in preparation for

According to the results of the competition protocols, the participation in competitions is effective

whether the places occupied by the participants of the experimental and contribute to the formation of the readiness of the wrestlers

and control groups. In the control group, it is lower than competitions within the boundaries of the chosen weight category.

weight loss averaged 2.5 (2.460±0.063) kg. categories.

To determine the skill of athletes by us Received 08/06/2008

Literature

1. Polievsky S.A., Podlivaev B.A., Grigorieva O.V. Regulation of body weight in martial arts and biologically active additives. M., 2002.

2. Yushkov O.P., Shpanov V.I. Sports wrestling. M., 2000.

3. Balsevich V.K. Methodological principles of research on the problem of selection and sports orientation // Theory and Practice physical culture. 1980. № 1.

4. Bahrakh I.I., Volkov V.M. The relationship of some morphological and functional indicators with the proportions of the body of boys of puberty. Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury. 1974. No. 7.

5. Groshenkov S.S., Lyassotovich S.N. On the forecast of promising athletes according to morphofunctional indicators // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kul'tury. 1973. No. 9.

7. Nyer B. Mogrydodepeubsie university undep an a t ap d n d e d e n d e n<Л1сИеп т Ьгг РиЬегМ // Ното. 1968. № 2.

8. Mantykov A.L. Organization of the educational and training process of qualified wrestlers with a decrease in body weight before competitions. Abstract of diss. for the degree of candidate of pedagogical sciences. 13.00.04. Ulan-Ude, 2003.

9. Nikityuk B.A., Kogan B.I. Adaptation of the athlete's skeleton. Kyiv, 1989.

10. Petrov V.K. Everyone needs strength. M., 1977.

11. Ionov S.F., Shubin V.I. Decrease in body weight before the competition // Sports wrestling: Yearbook. 1986.

12. Mugdusiev I.P. Hydrotherapy. M., 1951.

13. Parfenov A.P. Physical remedies. Guide for doctors and students. L., 1948.

UDC 159.923.+159

G.N. Popov

PROBLEMS OF TEACHING CHILDREN WITH MENTAL RELATED

Tomsk State Pedagogical University

Mentally retarded (retarded) children - most of all - include a very heterogeneous mass of children, a more numerous category of abnormal children. which are united by the presence of brain damage,

They make up approximately 1-3% of the total child's diffuse, i.e. widespread,

populations. The concept of "mentally retarded child" is, as it were, a "spilled" character. Morphological

changes, although with unequal intensity, capture many areas of the cerebral cortex, disrupting their structure and functions. Of course, such cases are not excluded when a diffuse lesion of the cortex is combined with individual more pronounced local (limited, local) disorders, with different distinctness of pronounced deviations in all types of mental activity.

The overwhelming majority of all mentally retarded children - pupils of an auxiliary school - are oligophrenics (from the Greek "foolish"). Damage to the brain systems, mainly the most complex and late-forming structures that cause underdevelopment and disorders of their psyche, occurs at early stages of development - in the prenatal period, at birth or in the first years of life, i.e. until the full development of speech. With oligophrenia, organic brain failure is residual (residual), non-progressive (non-aggravating) in nature, which gives grounds for an optimistic prognosis.

Already in the preschool period of life, the painful processes that took place in the brain of an oligophrenic child stop. The child becomes practically healthy, capable of mental development. However, this development is carried out abnormally, since its biological basis is pathological.

Oligophrenic children are characterized by persistent disturbances in all mental activity, which are especially clearly manifested in the sphere of cognitive processes. Moreover, there is not only a lag behind the norm, but also a deep originality of both personal manifestations and cognition. Thus, the mentally retarded cannot in any way be equated with normally developing younger children, they are different in many of their manifestations.

Oligophrenic children are capable of development, which essentially distinguishes them from weak-minded children of all progressive forms of mental retardation, and although the development of oligophrenic people is slow, atypical, with many, sometimes sharp deviations, nevertheless, it is a progressive process that introduces qualitative changes in the mental activity of children, in their personal sphere.

The mental structure of a mentally retarded child is extremely complex. The primary defect gives rise to many other secondary and tertiary abnormalities. Violations of the cognitive activity and personality of the oligophrenic child are clearly detected in its most diverse manifestations. Defects in cognition and behavior involuntarily attract the attention of others.

However, along with shortcomings, these children also have some positive opportunities, the presence of which serves as a support that ensures the development process.

The position on the unity of the laws of normal and abnormal development, emphasized by L.S. Vygotsky, gives reason to believe that the concept of the development of a normal child in general can be used in interpreting the development of mentally retarded children. This allows us to talk about the identity of the factors affecting the development of a normal and mentally retarded child.

The development of oligophrenics is determined by biological and social factors. Among the biological factors are the severity of the defect, the qualitative originality of its structure, the time of its occurrence. It is necessary to take them into account when organizing special pedagogical influence.

Social factors are the immediate environment of the child: the family in which he lives, adults and children with whom he communicates and spends time, and, of course, the school. Domestic psychology affirms the provisions on the leading role in the development of all children, including the mentally retarded, the cooperation of the child with adults and children who are next to him, and education in the broadest sense of this term. Properly organized education and upbringing, adequate to the capabilities of the child, based on the zone of its proximal development, is especially important. It is this that stimulates the advancement of children in general development.

Special psychology suggests that upbringing, education and labor training for mentally retarded children are even more significant than for normally developing ones. This is due to the much lesser ability of oligophrenics to independently receive, comprehend, store and process information received from the environment, i.e. less than normal, the formation of various aspects of cognitive activity. The reduced activity of a mentally retarded child, a much narrower range of their interests, as well as other peculiar manifestations of the emotional-volitional sphere, are also of certain importance.

For the advancement of an oligophrenic child in general development, for the assimilation of knowledge, skills and abilities, specially organized training and education is essential. Staying in an ordinary mass school often does not bring him any benefit, and in a number of cases leads to serious consequences, to persistent, sharply negative shifts in his personality. Special training for

aimed at the development of mentally retarded children, provides primarily for the formation of higher mental processes in them, especially thinking. Defective thinking in oligophrenics is revealed especially sharply and, in turn, slows down and makes it difficult to understand the world around. At the same time, it has been proven that the thinking of an oligophrenic undoubtedly develops. The formation of mental activity contributes to the advancement of a mentally retarded child in general development and thereby creates a real basis for the social and labor adaptation of graduates of an auxiliary school.

Speech serves as an instrument of human thinking, a means of communication and regulation of activity. All mentally retarded children, without exception, have more or less pronounced deviations in speech development, which are found at various levels of speech activity. Some of them can be corrected relatively quickly, while others are smoothed out only to some extent, manifesting themselves under complicated conditions. Oligophrenics are characterized by a delay in the formation of speech, which is found in a later than normal understanding of speech addressed to them and in defects in its independent use. Speech underdevelopment can be observed at various levels of speech utterance. It is found in the difficulties that occur in mastering pronunciation, which are widely represented in the lower grades. This gives grounds to talk about the later and defective, compared with the norm, the development of phonemic hearing in oligophrenic children, which is so important for learning to read and write, about the difficulties that arise when it is necessary to accurately coordinate the movements of the speech organs.

Deviations from the norm also occur in the assimilation of the vocabulary of the native language. The vocabulary is poor, the meanings of words are not sufficiently differentiated. The sentences used by oligophrenic children are often built primitively, not always correctly. They contain various deviations from the norms of the native language - violations of coordination, control, omissions of members of the sentence, in some cases - and the main ones. Complex, especially complex sentences, begin to be used late, which indicates difficulties in understanding and reflecting various interactions between objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality, and allows us to speak about the underdevelopment of children's thinking.

For the social adaptation of a person, it is very important to communicate with other people, the ability to enter into a conversation and support it, i.e. a certain level of dialogue formation is required

Czech speech. The education of mentally retarded children is largely based on the processes of memory, which has many peculiar features. The volume of material memorized by the students of the auxiliary school is significantly less than that of their normally developing peers. Moreover, the more abstract this material is, the less children remember it. The accuracy and strength of memorization of both verbal and visual material is low. The memorization of texts, even simple ones, suffers from imperfections among schoolchildren, since they are not sufficiently able to use mnemonic techniques - to divide the material into paragraphs, to highlight the main idea, to identify key words and expressions, to establish semantic connections between parts, etc.

Significant deviations from the norm can be seen by studying how mentally retarded children perceive the objects around them. Currently, the most studied is the visual perception of oligophrenics, with the help of which they receive a significant part of the information about the environment. It has been established that the visual perception of secondary school students is inhibited. And this means that in order to see and recognize a familiar object, students need more time than their normally developing peers. This is an important feature that has a certain influence on the orientation of children in space and, probably, on the process of learning to read.

Especially difficult for oligophrenics is the active adaptation of perception to changing conditions. Because of this, they incorrectly recognize inverted images of well-known objects, mistaking them for other objects that are in their usual position.

Significant deviations take place not only in cognitive activity, but also in the personality manifestations of mentally retarded children. Human personality is a product of socio-historical development. It is formed in the course of diverse interactions with the environment. Since the interaction of the oligophrenic child with the environment is changed due to intellectual inferiority, his personality is formed in peculiar conditions, which is revealed in various aspects.

In the totality of the diverse mental traits of a person, a significant place belongs to the will. Will is the ability of a person to act in the direction of a consciously set goal, overcoming the obstacles that arise. Often a volitional act includes a struggle of multidirectional tendencies. The decisive role in volitional processes is played by the mental construction of

future situation, the activity of the internal plan, which determines the result of the struggle of motives and the decision in favor of a volitional act. In mentally retarded children, who are characterized by sharp disturbances in thinking, volitional processes suffer significantly. This feature has attracted the attention of psychologists for a long time and was included as one of the characteristic features for this category of abnormal children in their general characteristics.

Closely related to the problem of will is the problem of emotions. Emotions reflect the meaning of phenomena and situations and manifest themselves in the form of direct experiences - pleasure, joy, anger, fear, etc. Our attitude towards other people, as well as the assessment of our own actions, the degree of activity of thinking, features of motor skills, movements largely depend on emotions. Emotions can in some cases induce a person to action, in others they interfere with the achievement of goals.

The formation of emotions is one of the most important conditions for the formation of a person's personality. The development of the emotional sphere is facilitated by the family, the whole life that surrounds the child and constantly affects him, and especially schooling. Emotions are directly related to the intellect. L.S. Vygotsky emphasized the idea that thinking and affect are different aspects of a single human consciousness, that the course of a child's development is based on changes occurring in the ratio of his intellect and affect.

Understanding the facial expressions and expressive movements of the characters depicted in the pictures causes significant difficulties in mentally retarded children. Often children give distorted interpretations, complex and subtle experiences are reduced to more

simple and elementary. This phenomenon is to a certain extent connected with the poverty of the vocabulary of oligophrenics, but is not limited to it. Adult help offered in the form of questions is not effective in all cases.

The study of the emotional sphere of mentally retarded adolescents with behavioral difficulties showed that the main cause of such conditions is the painful experience of a sense of one's own inferiority, often complicated by infantilism, an unfavorable environment, and other circumstances. Children have little control over their emotional manifestations and often do not even try to do so.

The formation of the personality of a mentally retarded child is directly related to the formation in him of a correct awareness of his social status, with self-esteem and the level of claims. The most important role is played by the relationship of the child with others, his own activities, as well as biological characteristics. Self-esteem and the level of claims of mentally retarded children are often not quite adequate. Many children overestimate their abilities: they are sure that they have a good command of knowledge, skills and abilities, that they are capable of various, sometimes quite complex tasks.

Significant positive shifts occur in the self-awareness of children by the senior years of education. They more correctly assess themselves, their actions, character traits, academic achievements, to confirm the correctness of their judgments, they give specific, often adequate examples, while revealing a certain self-criticism. In assessing their intelligence, children are less independent. Usually they identify it with school success.

Received May 16, 2008

Literature

1. Strebeleva E.A. Special preschool pedagogy. M., 2002.

2. Rubinshtein S.Ya. Psychology of a mentally retarded student. M., 1986.

3. Zeigarnik B.V. Psychology of personality: norm and pathology. M., 1998.

4. Zak A.Z. The development of mental abilities of younger students. M., 1994.

5. Gavrilushkina O.P. On the organization of the upbringing of children with mental deficiencies. M., 1998.

7. Petrova V.G., Belyakova I.V. Who are children with developmental disabilities? M., 1998.

It is believed that deviations in the mental development of a child cannot be distinguished at an early age, and any inappropriate behavior is regarded as a childish whim. However, today specialists can notice many mental disorders already in a newborn, which allows them to start treatment on time.

Neuropsychological signs of mental disorders in children

Doctors identified a number of syndromes - mental characteristics of children, most common at different ages. The syndrome of functional deficiency of subcortical formations of the brain develops in the prenatal period. It is characterized by:

• Emotional instability, expressed in frequent mood swings;
• Increased fatigue and associated low work capacity;
• Pathological stubbornness and laziness;
• Sensitivity, capriciousness and uncontrollability in behavior;
• Prolonged enuresis (often up to 10-12 years);
• Underdevelopment of fine motor skills;
• Manifestations of psoriasis or allergies;
• Appetite and sleep disorders;
• Slow formation of graphic activity (drawing, handwriting);
• Tics, grimacing, screaming, uncontrollable laughter.

The syndrome is quite difficult to correct, because due to the fact that the frontal regions are not formed, most often deviations in the mental development of the child are accompanied by intellectual insufficiency.

Dysgenetic syndrome associated with functional deficiency of brain stem formations can manifest itself in childhood up to 1.5 years. Its main features are:

• Disharmonious mental development with a shift in stages;
• Facial asymmetries, improper growth of teeth and violation of the body formula;
• Difficulty falling asleep;
• The abundance of age spots and moles;
• Distortion of motor development;
• Diathesis, allergies and disorders in the endocrine system;
• Problems in the formation of neatness skills;
• encopresis or enuresis;
• Distorted pain threshold;
• Violations of phonemic analysis, school maladaptation;
• Memory selectivity.

The mental characteristics of children with this syndrome are difficult to correct. Teachers and parents should ensure the neurological health of the child and the development of his vestibular-motor coordination. It should also be borne in mind that emotional disorders are aggravated against the background of fatigue and exhaustion.

The syndrome associated with the functional immaturity of the right hemisphere of the brain can manifest itself from 1.5 to 7-8 years. Deviations in the mental development of the child are manifested as:

• Mosaic perception;
• Violation of the differentiation of emotions;
• Confabulations (fantasy, fiction);
• color vision disorders;
• Errors in assessing angles, distances and proportions;
• Distortion of memories;
• Feeling of multiple limbs;
• Violations of the setting of stresses.

To correct the syndrome and reduce the severity of mental disorders in children, it is necessary to ensure the neurological health of the child and pay special attention to the development of visual-figurative and visual-effective thinking, spatial representation, visual perception and memory.

There are also a number of syndromes that develop from 7 to 15 years due to:

• Birth injury of the cervical spinal cord;
• General anesthesia;
• concussions;
• emotional stress;
• intracranial pressure.

To correct deviations in the child's mental development, a set of measures is needed to develop interhemispheric interaction and ensure the child's neurological health.

Mental characteristics of children of different ages

The most important thing in the development of a small child under 3 years old is communication with the mother. It is the lack of maternal attention, love and communication that many doctors consider the basis for the development of various mental disorders. Doctors call the second reason a genetic predisposition transmitted to children from parents.

The period of early childhood is called somatic, when the development of mental functions is directly related to movements. The most typical manifestations of mental disorders in children include digestive and sleep disorders, startling at sharp sounds, and monotonous crying. Therefore, if the baby is anxious for a long time, it is necessary to consult a doctor who will help either diagnose the problem or dispel the fears of the parents.

Children aged 3-6 years are developing quite actively. Psychologists characterize this period as psychomotor, when the reaction to stress can manifest itself in the form of stuttering, tics, nightmares, neuroticism, irritability, affective disorders and fears. As a rule, this period is quite stressful, since usually at this time the child begins to attend preschool educational institutions.

The ease of adaptation in the children's team largely depends on the psychological, social and intellectual preparation. Mental abnormalities in children of this age may occur due to increased stress, for which they are not prepared. It is quite difficult for hyperactive children to get used to the new rules that require perseverance and concentration.

At the age of 7-12 years, mental disorders in children may manifest as depressive disorders. Quite often, for self-affirmation, children choose friends with similar problems and a way of expressing themselves. But even more often in our time, children replace real communication with virtual ones in social networks. The impunity and anonymity of such communication contributes to even greater alienation, and existing disorders can progress rapidly. In addition, prolonged concentration in front of a screen affects the brain and can cause epileptic seizures.

Deviations in the mental development of a child at this age, in the absence of a reaction from adults, can lead to quite serious consequences, including sexual developmental disorders and suicide. It is also important to monitor the behavior of girls, who often begin to be dissatisfied with their appearance during this period. In this case, anorexia nervosa can develop, which is a severe psychosomatic disorder that can irreversibly disrupt metabolic processes in the body.

Doctors also note that at this time, mental abnormalities in children can develop into a manifest period of schizophrenia. If you do not respond in time, pathological fantasies and overvalued hobbies can develop into crazy ideas with hallucinations, changes in thinking and behavior.

Deviations in the mental development of a child can manifest itself in different ways. In some cases, the parents' fears are not confirmed to their joy, and sometimes the help of a doctor is really needed. The treatment of mental disorders can and should be carried out only by a specialist who has sufficient experience to make the correct diagnosis, and success largely depends not only on the right medicines, but also on the support of the family.

Video from YouTube on the topic of the article:

Mental retardation- congenital or acquired in the early postnatal period underdevelopment of the psyche with phenomena of severe insufficiency of intelligence, difficulty or complete impossibility of the individual's social functioning. The term "" in world psychiatry has established itself in the last two decades, entered the international classifications, replacing the previously used term "oligophrenia".

The concept of oligophrenia and the term itself were introduced into the scientific lexicon by E. Kraepelin (1915) as a synonym for the concept of “general mental retardation”.

ICD-10 (F70-79) defines mental retardation as “a condition of delayed or incomplete development of the psyche, which is primarily characterized by a violation of the abilities that appear during maturation and provide a general level of intelligence, i.e. cognitive, speech, motor and social features. The obligate signs are the early (up to three years) occurrence of intellectual insufficiency and impaired adaptation in the social environment.

The main manifestation of oligophrenia is mental underdevelopment, depending on the characteristics of the form of the disease, it can be combined with various physical, neurological, mental, biochemical, endocrine, autonomic disorders. The absence of progredientity is also its obligate feature, in contrast to various variants of dementing processes.

The prevalence of oligophrenia has not been fully studied. The maximum values ​​of this indicator fall on the age of 10-19 years, it is at this age that special requirements are imposed on the level of cognitive abilities (school education, admission to college, conscription). Official medical records give a wide range of scatter rates from 1.4 to 24.6 per 1000 adolescent population. Regional indicators on the prevalence of oligophrenia also fluctuate. This may be due to the presence of isolates, differences in environmental and socio-economic conditions of life, and the quality of medical care provided.

Izvestia

PENZA STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY named after V. G. BELINSKY SOCIAL SCIENCES № 28 2012

PENZENSKOGO GOSUDARSTVENNOGO PEDAGOGICHESKOGO UNIVERSITETA imeni V. G. BELINSKOGO PUBLIC SCIENCES № 28 2012

UDC 159.9:37.015.3

METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TEACHING PEOPLE WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

© i. S. VOLODINA, and. ANTIPOVA Southern Federal University, Department of Special and Practical Psychology, Department of Educational Psychology e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Volodina I. S., Antipova I. G. - Methodological problems of teaching people with mental retardation // Proceedings of PSPU im. V. G. Belinsky. 2012. No. 28. S. 1167-1173. - The necessity of methodological research in the psychology of teaching people with mental retardation is considered. The possibility of revising the content of teaching people with mental retardation is shown. A person with mental retardation is considered in its originality of meaning, which is revealed in training.

Key words: mental retardation, methodological analysis of teaching the mentally retarded, meaning.

Volodina I. S., Antipova I. G. - Methodological problems in training people with mental retardation // Izv. penz. gos. teacher. univ. im.i V. G. Belinsky. 2012. No. 28. R. 1167-1173. - The need in methodological researches of psychological aspects of teaching of individuals with intellectual disabilities is discussed. The possibility of revising the content of training the mentally retarded is viewed. Individual with intellectual disabilities is considered in a cultural context.

Key words: mental retardation, learning, methodological analysis of the mentally retardation, meaning, sense.

Actual problems of special psychology and pedagogy, traditionally associated with the creation of adequate methods of teaching and teaching people with deviant development, reveal a somewhat one-sided elaboration of methodological problems.

Education of people with mental retardation is based on the principles of humanism and adaptation to the norm. Substantially, these principles suggest that the problems of the norm have already been comprehended, which means that the purpose, content and methods of training, education and psychological correction are clear and obvious.

However, there is reason to believe that the methodological resources for identifying mental retardation as a subject of research in special psychology and pedagogy are not widely considered.

Mental retardation is now increasingly viewed in a social way, in terms of the inclusion of a person with mental retardation in social life. So, for example, in a widely used modern definition, mental retardation is understood as "a set of etiologically different hereditary, congenital or early acquired persistent non-progressive syndromes of general mental retardation, manifested in difficulty in social adaptation mainly due to the prevailing intellectual defect" .

Attention is focused on the area of ​​application of the forces of specialists involved in the system of psychological and pedagogical support and training of people with mental retardation - increasing their potential for "adaptive functioning", that is, the degree of success with which a person copes with the requirements of everyday life, the ability to live independently and adhere to social standards.

The means of social adaptation is traditionally recognized and is training aimed at obtaining labor skills, developing communication skills. This position was based on the results of studies by domestic and foreign psychologists who specifically studied the role of "practical intelligence" in the social adaptation of children and adolescents with mental retardation.

At the same time, a number of researchers note that for many years cognitive activity in conditions of mental underdevelopment has remained a priority area of ​​study. This was reflected in the classic for Soviet defectology definition of mental retardation - “a persistent impairment of cognitive activity due to organic damage to the brain (hereditary or acquired)” (M. S. Pevzner, V. V. Lebe-

Dinsky, A. R. Luria, S. Ya. Rubinstein). Exceptional interest in the specifics of cognitive activity and the development of mental processes involved in it was mediated by the demands of practice - teaching children and adolescents, which was understood mainly as the assimilation / accumulation of knowledge, skills and abilities within the framework of the educational program. Social development, in general, remained outside the subject area of ​​research.

P.I. Troshin spoke about the narrowness and harmfulness of the view, which "sees only a disease in abnormal children, forgetting that in addition to the disease, there is also a normal mental life in them."

interest in the social factor does not yet mean the development of methodological problems and the availability of ready-made programs for the study of people with mental retardation in the social aspect, which would manifest itself, in particular, in recognizing the importance of mental life and social meaning in a person with mental retardation.

The one-sidedness of methodological approaches means that research and teaching methods are selected according to the external criteria of the norm, without touching the question of what mental retardation is in its essence.

In the case of rethinking the content of mental retardation, it turns out that it is possible to single out aspects that are not updated in the traditional methodological position of special psychology and pedagogy.

The methodological issue is the question of determination - what causes the backwardness that accompanies intellectual underdevelopment - social or natural factors. This methodological issue of determination, as well as the question of what mental retardation is, is also comprehended as a practical issue related to determining the content and method of education.

The question of the essence of the object under study, solved on the basis of an analysis of mental retardation as a human being and in human interaction, means that mental retardation can be understood as a cultural reality, as another human psyche in the world of culture.

In this case, it is not just a question of determination, but a question of whether or not a person with mental retardation can enter the world of the human under learning conditions.

In case of recognition of the impossibility due to natural or social (or both) factors, we can say that the psyche of this child is only perceived culturally, from the point of view of a cultural other, but the child participates in this cultural interaction (being an object of perception) not as cultural participant in this interaction. and then the peculiarities of the psyche of this child cannot be considered cultural.

In this case, trying to consider what kind of object is present, the question of mental

backwardness must be discussed in connection with the question of what culture is. If culture is a set of correct skills, methods of social adaptation, then people with mental retardation, however, like many normal people, turn out to be uncultured.

The theory of A. A. Pelipenko opens up the possibility of seeing the problems of the existence of a person as cultural in culture, this theory reveals those issues that are resolved outside of their awareness as cultural and therefore often naive and limited. According to A. A. Pelipenko, culture acts as a system of “principles of meaning formation and phenomenological products of this meaning formation” .

Binarity is "a universal code for describing the world, adaptation in it, and in general any meaning-making and shaping in culture" [ibid., p. 34]. “The opposition discrete-continuum can be attributed to the number of universal dualizing principles ... because, like the opposition immanent-transcendent, it is fundamentally irremovable. The flow of mental activity is continual, but at the same time quantized into discrete acts. External reality as a whole is also continuous, at least in the sense of the continuity of its reflection in the psychic flow itself. At the same time, this reality consists of discrete elements, at least in the sense that each of them can become an autonomous object of sensation and is singled out as a conditional whole in reflection. The removal of the opposition is discrete-continuous, ... always has a partial and conditional character and serves. establishing a pragmatic semantic connection between what is posited and what is outside in the context” [ibid., p. 46-47]. Duality is a break in the primary connection, a condition for the positing of meaning.

for both the normal and the mentally retarded, the problem of culture is to find meaning. “The transcendent, like a horizon, looms before the cultural consciousness, limiting the circle of its empirical experience. This horizon, moreover, constantly beckons with the possibility of going beyond the limits of not only this very experience, but the entire system of cultural meaning formation in dual oppositions in general. However, each breakthrough only peels off new meanings from the sphere of the transcendent and inscribes them in the system of the same immanent cultural experience” [ibid, p. 41].

A person gains an experience of meaning in his attempts at "absolute transcending" that give the desired results. “The correlates of the transcendent in the history of culture can be such forms as due, norm, law” [ibid.].

“The principle of transcendence pervades culture. It is one of the key intentions that sets in motion the process of cultural meaning formation with the whole richest spectrum of practice.” “The opposition discrete-continuum models the pragmatic. aspect of culture. The procedure for establishing discrete-continuum

relations precedes and conditions all further operations of sense formation... the discrete-continuum opposition acts as a modus of the immanent-transcendent opposition... the selection of a single object is the transfer of the selection of oneself (as a subject) from the continuum onto. external object... the subject is aware of or. feels itself as discrete/singular and fallen away from the general vital-psychic and empirical flow” [ibid.], and then this experience of falling away makes it possible to posit the object as a discrete object.

The mentally retarded therefore must be considered in the cultural space as solving the problems posed by culture, because he sees discrete objects, but these discretization actions cannot be considered analogous to the actions of an individual recognized as normal, they cannot be considered just “lagging behind” normal cultural action.

mentally retarded and the problems of his education are considered not only in connection with the criteria applied to normal students, but also in connection with a specific system of relations with others. This gives certain results, but the narrow understanding of the problem of "culturing" opens up when the fundamental problems of learning are comprehended. mental retardation must be considered not only and not so much in a specific system with others, no matter how beneficial it may seem in practice, but in connection with acts of archaic consciousness. “The archaic consciousness spontaneously gave the objects of the surrounding world the features of anthropic ontology. this anthropomorphization of the discretizing objective environment, as well as the elements of physical space, is. an attempt to restore the lost (or just lost?) universal ontic connection of everything with everything in a specific cultural, anthropic, modality ... anthropic connection ... prepares the living environment for a specifically cultural form and meaning formation. Examples of anthropization are diverse: it is the anthropoization of the visual space in the primitive visual complex” [ibid., p. 42].

“The world of dual oppositions in which culture unfolds is torn apart. Staying in it is traumatic, dooms a person to the search and choice of an object, as well as the principle and method of participation - a situational state of existential unity with another, in which the gap is closed [ibid, p. 29]. In the theory of A. A. Pelipenko, one can see that culture is not a system of patterns of adaptation or moral and aesthetic patterns, therefore, a mentally retarded person who does not appropriate patterns cannot rely on existing outside of culture. It is the choice of the object of participation and attempts at meaning formation that is a problem that is understandable both to the mentally retarded and to those who are involved in activities in a culture called normal. The trauma described by A. A. Pelipenko is the common path of a person, even a mentally retarded one.

However, meaning-setting cannot be considered psychologically or as a goal-oriented action of a person. even a normal person with a preserved intellect does not set the goal of gaining meaning, although he tries to overgrow the primary gap as the expansion of binary oppositions. Not according to psychological, but cultural criteria, it is possible to distinguish between the actions carried out in the space of culture and outside of culture, the actions of the normal and the mentally retarded.

The binarity of culture is carried out in the principle of symmetry. “Symmetry is a universal principle that ensures the positing of empirically disparate phenomena and entities in a single ontological plane, in which, in turn, the positing and grouping of any oppositions is carried out. Symmetry as a principle of thinking sets the vision of space (or plane), where a certain connection of semantic elements that lie in a single ontological modality is initially postulated. Symmetry originates not from empirically observed symmetry relations between individual elements, but from the principle of positing the topological zones of the semantic space themselves. the principle of symmetry forms an ontological niche for binary meaning. The primary impulse for the establishment of such a symmetry-binary meaning-formation is the discreteness of the elements of the pair... the more specific (discrete!) one of the elements of the opposition, the more definite its symmetrical correlation with the element-bearer of opposite qualities. And these opposite qualities, with the symmetry unity of the ontology, serve as a channel for isolating the opposite object, its semantization and definition in its symmetry-discrete autonomy. The symmetrical breakdown of the semantic space into levels and the symmetrical zoning of each of these levels is the primary condition for the proper cultural sense-making, overcoming the chaotic heterogeneity of the environment. Any dual opposition, regardless of its semantic content. symmetrical, because, on the one hand, its elements are given in a single ontological modality and, on the other hand, they are, as it were, initially equidistant from the consciousness that posits them. But dualization is always axiological. This means that equidistance exists only in an ideal model. In reality, however, the separation of sign and evaluation can never be completely eliminated. Even modern scientific-rational consciousness cannot fully get rid of it" [ibid., p. 43]. Moreover, a mentally retarded person cannot get rid of this.

The positing of meaning in the dualized space of culture is called participation. A. A. Pelipenko considers participation as a cultural act. “Usually, this word [participation] is understood as the establishment of subject-object relations according to the part-whole principle. When the human subject experiences the unity of himself as a part with some unconditionally positively marked whole, this is called

they are participatory (“and I am a particle of this force”). We understand participation in a somewhat broader sense. Part-whole relationships can also be reversed: the subject feels himself to be a whole, a natural discrete phenomenon (empirical object, some knowledge, etc.); participatory relations can also be of a parity nature (an act of love). It is important that common to all these situations is the action of the mechanism of naturalization as a point-to-point removal (AuNcibu) of subject-object relations and situational folding of a synthetic onto-axiological field. The experience of this state marks the maximum approach to the achievement of a non-dual (consistent) state. Situationally removing the general meta-opposition I-other in the act of participation, the human subject in the act of unity also removes all the modalities of subject-object relations” [ibid, p. 56].

Meaning gives a way out of the dual state, but the meaning is always profaned by existence, being burned for the needs of existence. Attempts to escape from the torn duality are illusory.

Attempts to overgrow the trauma were implemented by a corpus of "mythological, ideological, scientific texts that reproduce the image of an ideally consistent being, ... taking a person beyond the framework of a dualized continuum" [ibid., 35]. It can be assumed, although this issue is subject to a detailed study, that the meaning-setting of those who are recognized as normal is carried out at the expense of semantic actions, acts, indications of abnormal ones. But even the abnormal, one might assume, carry out acts of meaning-making in connection with the normal.

A person exists in the space of lost meaning between the original and acquired, “experiencing cultural consciousness is always in the space of the second position, . and discretizing dualization dooms consciousness to constant analysis (in a broad, and not just in a logical sense). Therefore, the desire to achieve a non-dual state is the pursuit” [ibid.] for the true meaning. This sense, in fact, is impossible and is not needed by the existing in reality.

mental retardation is included in the culture with the help of rhythm, which, although known to those who deal with students, is not understood as a mechanism for the meaning of culture. “The fragmentation of the continuum into discrete elements is a constantly operating principle of cultural genesis and one of the most important procedural aspects of axiological dualization. The discretization of a single something both ontologically and psychologically precedes its semantization and semiotization, endowing it with meaning and value markedness. The discretization principle underlies the ordering of the syncretic continuum through its structuring division. Here symmetry and rhythm play a special role” [ibid., p. 43]. The meaning of rhythm is that “along with symmetry, the most important factor in establishing discrete con-

The main relationship is rhythm. In a certain sense, we can say that symmetry relations act as an internal element of the rhythmic structure... The rhythms of culture are not just a continuation of the rhythms of nature... the human subject, . and would not differ from a natural individual. Rhythmic relations in nature are ... of an object-object nature” [ibid., p. 44]. A person in culture, who has fallen out of the natural continuum, is included in the rhythms of culture.

“Rhythmic structures had to be built on the basis of emerging subjectivity, and not just reproduce natural constants. What is the first manifestation of this emerging human subjectivity? In the aspect of rhythmization as a form of establishing discrete-continuum relations, the specificity of human subjectness lies primarily in the establishment of the cultural modality of time. Physical... time, like a continually pulsating duration, is torn apart, "bumping" into the alienating, self-perception of the human self. Various aspects of this process have repeatedly become the subject of philosophical analysis” [ibid., p. 45].

Rhythm is used in teaching the mentally retarded, but only awareness of the mentally retarded as cultural and in culture can adequately understand the meaning of rhythm in lessons with the mentally retarded.

Education sets the space and factors of meaning. It can be assumed that this is the space of meaning-making for both the mentally retarded and the teacher. In learning, the student participates and tries out the methods of joining. The problematization of meanings is described by V.T. Kudryavtsev as an inversion of cultural forms. This important moment of learning reveals the essence of the cultural production of meanings. Works by V.T. Kudryavtsev has not yet been extrapolated in special psychology.

Attachment always presupposes an object of attachment, rooted in authority, and this is done in the face of the masses.

mental retardation acts as a sense-setting in terms of interaction with others, but a sense-setting that has specificity. Then the backwardness from the norm becomes not so obvious, and what is usually unequivocally attributed to a violation can be considered in the context of the specifics of the possibilities of meaning-making, becoming in the cultural space.

In the understanding of culture A. A. Pelipenko “the ontological aspect of being is modeled in the general opposition of the immanent-transcendent. Behind the usual opposition of the immanent as accessible to empirical experience to the transcendent as lying outside this experience lies the most fundamental cultural and genetic meaning” [ibid, p. 34].

This meaning is revealed as the separation of the self and the other, the establishment of boundaries between the self and the other. This problem of becoming in culture is poorly described.

in studies of the mentally retarded, the work of introducing the mentally retarded in learning into the binary of self and other is not seen as a cultural problem and a problem of the mentally retarded individual in his self-positing in culture. This goes back to the understanding of mental retardation as a weak opportunity for the assimilation of culture, to a misunderstanding that cultural problems are solved by the mentally retarded and that culture receives its artifacts in the behavior of the mentally retarded. The education of the mentally retarded should be viewed not as cultivation, but as a cultural space in which the problem of meaning for the mentally retarded is posed and solved, even if it seems to be outside of culture.

In case of refusal to consider these methodological issues, in fact, one question is solved - what affects mental retardation - nature or society. To what extent is it possible to correct and normalize the psyche of a child with mental retardation? If it is impossible to do this, then it is considered that the natural factor works, if a correction is possible, sociality works. This means that the rejection of methodological analysis means that the practitioner who carries out the correction does not analyze what he is doing, how and why it works.

Accepting that mental retardation is not a natural or social, but a cultural phenomenon, the specificity of which is in the characteristics of the meaning of a person (with mental retardation), we can say that methodological analysis makes it possible to build research and work taking into account the cultural specifics of mental retardation.

An alternative position is the construction of an analysis from the selected individual functions that a person with mental retardation needs to perform in order to adapt in society.

Common sense dictates that one should develop a person with mental retardation not on the basis of abstract criteria, but look at the specific conditions of his existence, considering what he needs for adaptation.

Such a view from the side of common sense and, in a certain sense, some relativization, which in no way casts doubt on the norm, but considers specific normal conditions to be an important point, can make learning difficult. The difficulties are connected, first of all, with the implicit understanding of the limitations of the “full adaptation” of a person with mental retardation.

Common sense is sometimes correlative to the methodological conclusions of classical science and in its values ​​goes back to classical rationality.

Methodology reveals the naivete of common sense and the limited number of problems that can be comprehended regardless of methodology. common sense error

meaning and classical understanding is that the norm is considered as a system of some characteristics, and in its function as a system of dispositions and regulators of behavior: "If there is a mind, then behavior will be smart." In some situations this is true, but the classical view, within the framework of its methodology, does not distinguish between different situations. The classical view tries not to notice that the normal is not always adaptive in situations of its capabilities.

The norm does not mean a quick and problem-free adaptation. Nevertheless, the priority of the significance of adaptation to specific conditions determines the importance of correcting (correcting) the violation. Then the problem of development is pushed aside and the main problem remains adaptation.

The methodology of general psychology already provides an opportunity to reconsider this understanding. A normal person is not at all as adaptable and happy as it seems to a mentally retarded person or someone who helps the latter to adapt. Normal is not always adaptable and not always adaptive. Non-adaptive activity is also normal.

Non-adaptive activity is not maladaptive, destructive activity. On the contrary, non-adaptation as going beyond the predetermined is the discovery of both one's own capabilities and a test of the components of accumulated experience that have become and are offered by the teacher for teaching.

The norm is recognized in its non-adaptive activity as capable of going beyond the limits of adaptation. This does not mean the insignificance of adaptation skills, the ability to learn, to interact with others, on the contrary, non-adaptive activity includes and goes beyond adaptation. Supra-situational activity as a non-adaptive activity implies by no means an inability to adapt, self-regulate, control one's behavior. V. A. Petrovsky fundamentally points out that non-adaptation is an exit into the undecided in a situation under control. the student can go out, or maybe linger on adaptability. the narrow framework of adaptation cannot include the entire learning space. While the mentally retarded are still considered only from the point of view of the inability to fully adapt. Learning trajectories for the mentally retarded are so far prescribed for the purposes of the maximum possible adaptation in a particular case.

“Pulling up” a person with mental retardation with the help of habilitation, training to the norm does not at all mean that adaptation and adaptability are achievable. Adaptation is some idea that does not regulate behavior, but determines only the perception of one's own behavior and its products. Understanding all the vicissitudes of the adaptation of the norm is possible only with a methodological analysis of the study and teaching of normal and "abnormal" people. The classical ideal of algorithmic research and teaching is transformed precisely within the framework of the methodology analysis.

If in the teaching of normal people sometimes questions of meaning are asked in the key of participation in an object that explains the existence of an individual, then in the psychology of teaching children with mental retardation this problem has not yet been raised.

Ignoring a person with mental retardation as a person engaged in meaning-making means a situation in which “at least” minimal adaptive actions or the performance of useful functions are expected from him. However, the functions are also distinguished based on the results of the work of society, adaptation and communication, on the basis of the activities of a normal person, not even on the basis of how a normal person can perform these functions.

The humanism of the approach seems to lie in the fact that a person with mental retardation is not presented with too high demands in training, given his backwardness from the ideal accepted in society. At the same time, the real possibilities of a person with mental retardation for society are not disclosed. It seems unthinkable that a person with mental retardation can teach normal people in terms of their activity and communication, teach, for example, humanity.

It is true that a mentally retarded person knows and can do less, it is true that when issues of adaptation are considered and it is not noticed that a child with mental retardation, like a normal child, is in the same cultural interaction, there is no autonomy for them in culture. The position of one is the opposition of the other.

Fundamentally, not at the level of sentimental reasoning, this question is posed as a rethinking of the principle of autonomy. Fundamentally, it is important to analyze mental retardation in cultural terms as a lack of some possibilities of meaning-making and as an object for the perception of the normal - an object in terms of persuading one's reality. And then mental retardation opens up new possibilities and principles of normality to those that exist not in the key and in the principle of adaptation.

The function of mental retardation is to arouse interest in methodology. The crisis of society, in particular, the education system actualizes the stock of dissystemic meanings, abilities, which in a situation of stability is marginalized and is not experienced as actually applicable.

Interest in the marginalized, children with disabilities, along with the relevance of humanistic discourse, is also due to interest in marginal or, more precisely, marginalized human abilities.

mental retardation acts as a dissis-dark reserve, actualized in a state of crisis, but the actualization of this reserve is possible provided that the originality of mental retardation is understood. The disclosure of a dissystemic stock as peripheral meanings does not imply the use of adaptation techniques, the meanings of a marginal group as a guide to action, on the contrary, it presupposes adequate

ness in actions with these meanings, a margin for adaptation. This does not imply "acceptance" as an admission of any semantic adaptation, but makes it possible to find out ways to establish a dialogue with mental retardation and corrective action.

mental retardation as a store of new meanings is perceived under the condition of understanding the need to abandon the preformist principle in education.

The development of society is carried out both by adults who comprehend problems, and by children and adolescents, who, in the assimilation of social experience, express both their activity and ingenuity in relation to the forms that have become (V. T. Kudryavtsev).

In connection with the revision of the principle of preformism, there is also the possibility of understanding mental retardation as a kind of peculiar way of forming new meanings that are inaccessible and incomprehensible to adults.

In this understanding, the education of children with mental retardation is not adaptation (no matter how relevant this problem may seem for the practice of education), but their inclusion in culture. Education, which includes a person with mental retardation in culture, confronts him with the problem of the cultural production of meanings, accessible to him and inaccessible to those recognized as normal.

The disclosure of mental retardation in the key of meaning production can provide an opportunity to see what problems it faces in learning, and learning as part of existence, and not "preliminary" to it. Education is a real space of existence and there are problems in it that both the normal and the mentally retarded have to comprehend. This methodological point of view can make it possible to accept developments in the psychology of teaching the mentally retarded, which have not yet been implemented in special education.

The ideas of V. A. Petrovsky about learning as a space of non-adaptive activity, revealing the potential of creativity and self-understanding, V. T. Kudryavtsev about the incorrectness of the separation of learning and creative processing of social experience presented to the student as a ready-made and unproblematic block of the past, ideas of V. V. Davydov, V. P. Zinchenko, I. S. Yakimanskaya, which constitute a significant potential of domestic thought, have not yet been updated in special psychology.

It can be assumed that in his work a special teacher implements a number of ideas of these scientists, but this moment is not explicated due to the methodological order.

Non-recognition of an individual who is in the flow of meaning production as a mentally retarded person, the classical understanding of the methodological question of what mental retardation is and the problems of the goal of learning in connection with adaptation to existing functions that are recognized as normal - all these methodological reasons do not yet give a complete answer.

lecture the practice of teaching the mentally retarded and recognize that the teaching of the mentally retarded is not the transfer of adaptive skills, but the function of inclusion in semantic production, the purpose of which for both normal and mentally retarded is participation in the object that substantiates and structures the acts of existence of the individual.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Volodina I. S. The specifics of the development of social intelligence of younger schoolchildren with mental retardation. Diss... cand. psychol. Sciences. St. Petersburg: Russian State Pedagogical University im. A.I. Herzen, 2004. 194 p.

2. Isaev D. N. Mental retardation. St. Petersburg: Rech, 2007. 392 p.

3. Kudryavtsev V. T. Cultural and historical status of childhood // Psychological journal. 1998. V. 19. No. 3. pp. 107-131.

4. Kudryavtsev V. T. Historicism in developmental psychology: from principle to problem // Psikhol. magazine. 1996. V. 17. No. 1. S. 5-17.

5. Pelipenko A. A., Yakovenko I. G. Culture as a system. M.: Languages ​​of Slavic culture, 1998. 365 p.

6. Petrovsky V. A. Psychology of non-adaptive activity. M.: ROU, 1992. 224 p.

7. Petrovsky V. A. Personality in psychology. Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 1996. 512 p.

State public educational institution of the Rostov region special (correctional) educational institution for students, pupils with disabilities special (correctional) general education schoolVIIIspecies No. 15 of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky

Article: "Thinking of children with intellectual disabilities".

Prepared by: mathematics teacher Victoria Bronislavovna Bykovskaya

Kamensk-Shakhtinsky 2015

Content

1. The concept of thinking………………………………………………………………….2

2. The specific nature of thinking…………………………………………………..5

3. Causes of mental retardation………………………………………………….8

4.L. S. Vygotsky on visual thinking………………………………………14

5.Inconsistency of thinking…………………………………………………18

Literature………………………………………………………………………..21

1. The concept of thinking

The psychology of a mentally retarded child is one of the branches of psychology that studies the special object of a student in a correctional school. Therefore, it is sometimes called special psychology. The most important section of special psychology is the section that studies the features of the cognitive processes of mentally retarded children. This paper deals with the development of thinking of mentally retarded children.

Whatever the cause of the mental retardation of the child, no matter how severe the disease of his nervous system (even if the disease progresses), development occurs along with decay. The closest connection and interdependence exists between the psychology of a mentally retarded child and oligophrenic pedagogy. As you know, oligophrenopedagogy studies the content and methods of educating mentally retarded children. But in order to know what to teach and to find the best methods and techniques of education and training, the oligophrenic pedagogue needs to know the mental characteristics of mentally retarded children. The upbringing and education of mentally retarded children is a humane and noble cause. Without special education and training, these children could become helpless, useless invalids. The school gives children the necessary knowledge and skills, helps to overcome or compensate for impaired mental functions, stimulates further mental development, helps to become full-fledged members of the family and society. To cope with such difficult tasks, the teacher must be able to understand the inner world of the child, his aspirations and real possibilities. Knowledge of the psychology of a mentally retarded child can help him in this.

Thinking is the highest form of reflection of the surrounding reality. Thinking (if we recall the most concise of the definitions given in general psychology) is a generalized and word-mediated cognition of reality. Thinking makes it possible to know the essence of objects and phenomena. Thanks to thinking, it becomes possible to foresee the results of certain actions, to carry out creative, purposeful activities.

The very definition of mental retardation contains an indication that its first sign is a violation of cognitive activity. It was this circumstance that made it necessary to create a special network of schools for the education of mentally retarded children.

In order to better understand how the thinking of a child with impaired activity of the cerebral cortex is formed and develops, you need to remember how this happens normally.

First, thinking is a generalization. An elementary generalization is already contained in the act of perception. In order for a child to recognize a tree in each tree, some generalized image of the tree must be formed in him in the course of personal experience. In this case, the image of the tree must be adequately correlated with the wordwood. But this is not yet a thought. Man thinks in terms. In the process of schooling, all the essential features of the concept of "tree" are revealed to the child: "A tree is a plant consisting of a root system, a trunk and a crown." Is such a general thought about a tree a continuation, an intensification of the same process of generalization that took place during perception? Yes and no. It is a continuation because it necessarily relies on the image of a tree that has been formed through personal experience. But this mental generalization also contains a qualitatively different process. It discards as superfluous, insignificant all those details and specific details, the presence of which is so necessary for specific recognition and perception (this is abstraction, or distraction). And it adds something new. This new thing might be absent from the child's personal experience (he might not see the roots of trees and not know the word "crown"), but it appears in the child's ideas with the help of verbal explanations that convey to him the experience and knowledge of mankind. An extensive circle of knowledge and concepts that the child's thinking operates with is brought into his consciousness by adults with the help of verbally formulated knowledge. For a solid assimilation of this knowledge, the child must have a stock of ideas. But the volume of this knowledge brought in through speech far exceeds the stock of ideas that the child manages to acquire in the course of his individual life. To master these concepts and knowledge, a full command of speech is necessary.

Secondly, thinking is mediated cognition. "Mediated" means the knowledge of one through the other. Hearing an angry voice and seeing the angry face of the mother, the child guesses (or, in other words, understands) that the mother has already seen the plate he broke. Having received the task in class to divide 6 apples into two, the child performs a similar operation on sticks and comes to the conclusion that each will get 3 apples. Comparing the product he made in the workshop with the sample that the teacher gave him, the child finds differences in them, analyzing which he comes to the conclusion that one of the elements of the product needs to be corrected.

All these mental operations of comparison, inference, all these actions of dividing, multiplying, creating an assumption and testing it, the child creates himself to a very small extent. An adult teaches him this mental action, he organizes for him a series of practical visual situations in which the child must navigate and act, and then formulates these tasks verbally. Gradually, learning approaches the stage when the child acquires the ability to carry out each such complex action "in the mind." A necessary step, a link in such a translation of a practical action into action in the mind is its verbal execution. But for this, the child again must master all types of speech.

A mentally retarded preschool child has an extremely low level of development of thinking, which is primarily due to the underdevelopment of the main tool for thinking of speech. Because of this, he poorly understood the meaning of the conversations of family members, the content of those fairy tales that were read to him. He often could not be a participant in the games, because he did not understand the necessary instructions and instructions; he was less and less often approached with ordinary instructions, as they saw that the child could not understand their meaning.

Due to defects in perception, the child has accumulated an extremely meager stock of ideas. Poverty, fragmentation and "discoloration" of the ideas of mentally retarded children are very well described by M. M. Nudelman. He shows how heterogeneous objects lose everything individual, original in the representations of children, become like each other, become similar.

2. The specific nature of thinking

The poverty of visual and auditory representations, extremely limited play experience, little familiarity with objective actions, and, most importantly, poor development of speech deprive the child of the necessary base on which thinking should develop.

Zh. I. Shif and V. G. Petrova formulate these thoughts very clearly. They write that the thinking of mentally retarded children is formed in conditions of inferior sensory cognition, speech underdevelopment, and limited practical activity. Consequently, a mentally retarded child is unprepared to enter school. He differs from a healthy child in the great concreteness of thinking and the weakness of generalizations.

But does it follow from this that a mentally retarded child is fundamentally incapable of abstraction and generalization, that his thinking can never go beyond concreteness?

In order to answer this difficult question, we must once again return to the question of how the transition from concrete to abstract thinking occurs and what it means to learn to think. Let's look at examples.

a) A child entering a correctional school is asked: “What is a bird?”. He replies: "She is gray, small, has a small nose or mouth." Before his eyes rises the image of a sparrow, which he saw recently. Answering the question of the teacher, he describes this image as best he can. At the same time, he does not take into account that there are large birds, that not all birds are gray. When asked, he will sayflies , then this will be a slightly better answer, since it indicates an essential feature that is characteristic of any bird. However, the following answer would be more correct: "A bird is a living creature that has wings and can fly." Such an answer would testify to the fact that the child has learned to define the concept and has mastered the concept itself, i.e., the thought that reflects the general and essential features of the object. But the child did not see with his own eyes that all birds have wings, he did not know how to distinguish wings from a bird sitting on the ground, and most importantly, he still did not learn what is living and non-living. All this the child could not "discover" himself. He could only learn about it from adults. But this requires a certain level of speech development.

b) The teacher offers an oligophrenic preschooler a task: “The boy had 3 sweets, he lost one. How many candies does he have left? Ignoring the question, the student says: "We must seek it and find it." The task caused the student to have a very visual image of the missing candy. Instead of an abstract attitude to the conditions of the problem, the child approached the given situation in a concrete, utilitarian way. The understanding of the conditional meaning of the task and the choice of a method of action corresponding to the conditions of the task still needs to be taught to the child.

c) The child is given a set of pictures and offered to sort them into groups according to the principle “what goes with what”. He can start the classification if he has already completed similar tasks. But he can start laying out the pictures in accordance with his life experience: he will put clothes near the closet, a sailor on a ship, etc. transport with transport, the child is unable to continue this line of reasoning. It continues to seem to him that the butterfly should be combined with the flowers, since he often saw how the butterfly sits on the flowers; that a cat cannot be put near a dog, since he has an idea of ​​what will come out of it, they will fight, etc. We say about such a child that he thinks concretely, that generalizations are inaccessible to him. This is how a mentally retarded child thinks in this experimental situation. Meanwhile, his healthy peer carries out the necessary classification almost without errors.

Therefore, to think concretely means to remain in the power of single visual images, not being able to understand the general, essential hidden behind them. To think concretely also means the inability to use in solving problems those mental operations and forms of thinking that were "discovered" by mankind in the course of its development. A mentally retarded child remembers rather than reflects.

In everyday life the wordspecifically sometimes used in a positive sense. “Speak specifically, advise the speaker at the meeting. But at the same time, they mean only a specific application of generally recognized and well-known provisions. In order for thought to have meaning in its concrete application, it must first rise from the concrete to the generalized, the abstract; it is in this abstraction and generalization that the value of genuine thinking lies; only after that does it make sense to apply the found general, natural to the particular, specific. When thought simply reproduces specific situational connections between objects and phenomena, it is poor and unproductive.

The book "Peculiarities of the Mental Development of Students in the Special School" contains a large amount of experimental data characterizing the inferiority of the mental operations of mentally retarded children (synthesis, analysis, comparison, etc.). For example, Zvereva and A.I. Lipkina came to the conclusion that mentally retarded children, when comparing objects, show a tendency to establish differences, while at the same time not being able to catch similarities. Professor L.V. Zankov discovered that when comparing phenomena or phenomena, mentally retarded children often rely on random external signs, without highlighting significant signs. Their judgments regarding compared objects are sometimes built according to the type: “The sparrow is gray, and the crow croaks”; in other words, the judgment has the form of a comparison, but in fact it is not such a comparison. The experience of every teacher in a correctional school testifies to the extraordinary concreteness of the thinking of students.

3. Causes of mental retardation

The main shortcoming of the thinking of mentally retarded children is the weakness of generalizations manifested in the learning process in the fact that children do not master the rules and general concepts well. They often learn the rules by heart, but do not understand their meaning and do not know to what phenomena these rules can be applied. Therefore, the study of grammar and arithmetic of subjects that require the most mastery of the rules presents the greatest difficulty for mentally retarded children. A difficult task for them is also the assimilation of new general concepts and rules that they deal with when studying other academic subjects. At the same time, both scientific research and school experience indicate that the students of the correctional school develop quite quickly and perform each of the mental operations better in the upper grades than in the first. It is legitimate to raise the question: can these shifts be assessed as quantitative improvements, within the same quality, or can children really learn to think?

To learn to think means: 1) to make the transition from reflecting reality in its situational visual images to reflecting it in concepts, rules, patterns; 2) to make an even more complex transition from simply reproducing these images and ideas to mental actions, i.e., to solving problems, formulating and testing hypotheses.

So can mentally retarded children learn to generalize? This question is still answered differently.

According to the first concept, the weakness of generalization is the primary basic defect that is not subject to further psychological explanation. Everything higher, human is inaccessible to a mentally retarded child. Generalization is the highest, most complex acquisition of the human brain. From brain damage follows the impossibility of generalization. If at the end of the life of a student in a special school it turned out that complex generalizations were available to him, this would mean. That there was a mistake, this person was never mentally retarded in childhood.

L. S. Vygotsky expresses a different point of view. Without at all denying the fact that the thinking of mentally retarded children is characterized by concreteness, L. S. Vygotsky wrote that the underdevelopment of higher forms of thinking is “the first and most frequent complication that occurs as a secondary syndrome in mental retardation”, but a complication that does not necessarily arise. Therefore, according to L. S. Vygotsky, mentally retarded childrencan learn to generalize. But this process (learning) is slower than in healthy people. In order to teach the mentally retarded the ability to generalize, it is necessary to use special teaching aids.

One can, of course, object that these views of L. S. Vygotsky remain only a hypothesis. But this hypothesis is very important for pedagogical practice. If we agree with the opinion of L. S. Vygotsky that the underdevelopment of higher mental functions is a frequent but not obligatory complication, then the questions immediately arise before the oligophrenic pedagogue: what are the causes of these complications? Is it possible to build the process of education and training in such a way that these complications do not occur?

L. S. Vygotsky himself indicates the direction in which to look for answers to these questions. This direction is the analysis of the development of the child, the history of the development of his personality, his consciousness.

Consequently, the hypothesis of L. S. Vygotsky is not only theoretically substantiated, but also productive in practical terms. She directs the thought of oligophrenopedagogues to search for ways to further transform and improve the upbringing and education of mentally retarded children.

But it is necessary to consider other theories, more precisely hypotheses about the nature of childhood dementia. A deep analysis of various theories of childhood dementia is given in the article by L. S. Vygotsky “The Problem of Mental Retardation”. Here he details and critically analyzes the data of the German psychologist Kurt Lewin, the author of the dynamic theory of mental retardation. According to this theory, the main causes of mental retardation in children are inertness, stiffness, and the lack of differentiation in their affective-volitional, or, in other words, personal sphere. (The concepts used by K. Levin are different from the concepts familiar to us that characterize the features of nervous processes studied by Academician IP Pavlov). Speaking about the stiffness of affects (emotions), about the undifferentiated layers of the personality, K. Levin means immaturity, inertness of intentions and actions of children, the peculiarities of the flow of their emotions. For K. Levin, the concepts of the affective and affective-volitional spheres to a certain extent reflect the qualities and attitudes of the child's personality. However, along with this, K. Levin reveals a somewhat formal, purely dynamic way of assessing these qualities. He writes about the elasticity or fragility of the structure of the material from which the personality is allegedly built, about the fluidity or inertia of different personality systems, about the differentiation or non-differentiation of the layers of the personality. From this one can see the considerable schematicity of the concepts used by him in characterizing the emotional sphere. But L. S. Vygotsky drew attention to the rational grain, which is contained in the theory of K. Levin. This rational grain consists in pointing out the dependence of thought, or rather the ability to think, on feelings and needs. We can agree with this positive assessment, since thinking, like any other human activity, is conditioned by its needs. However, although K. Levin refers to the sphere of needs (this is correct), the very concept of needs remains undeveloped for him, just like the concept of the affective-volitional sphere. Limited only by dynamic characteristics. Paying tribute to the positive trend in the theory of K. Levin, L. S. Vygotsky further criticizes this theory and its author for being metaphysical.

K. Levin, based on data from experimental studies of the sphere of needs, intentions and the structure of actions of mentally retarded children, explains the concreteness of their thinking, the inability to abstract and generalize with the rigidity and inertia of the affective sphere. He argues thus. The concreteness of reasoning of an imbecile child means that every thing and every event acquires its own special meaning for him. He cannot single them out as independent parts, regardless of the situation. Therefore, abstraction, i.e., the formation of a group and its generalization on the basis of a known essential relationship between objects, is extremely difficult for this child. By its very nature, abstraction requires some kind of abstraction from the situation that completely binds the retarded child. In other words, if we return to the examples given earlier, for a mentally retarded child the image of the gray sparrow he has just seen is so strong and significant that he is not able, due to his emotional inertia, to discard this image in order to master the abstract concept of "bird". In another case, he is so riveted by the idea of ​​a lost candy that he is unable to move on to counting the remaining ones.

L. S. Vygotsky does not at all dispute the fact that the mental processes of mentally retarded children are distinguished by stiffness. He does not deny the position that the development of the child's psyche (both normal and feeble-minded) is based on the unity of affect and intellect. But L. S. Vygotsky criticizes K. Levin for his metaphysical nature, that is, for his primitive understanding of the idea of ​​child development. He says that not only stiffness and inertness affect thinking, causing its concreteness. There is also an inverse relationship, i.e., the opposite effect. As the child's thinking develops with the help of speech, it, this thinking, influences the structure of his actions, the dynamics of his affective reactions, makes this dynamics more mobile. A deeper, generalized understanding of the situation allows the child to rise above it, as it were, to begin to act more independently and intelligently.

L. S. Vygotsky formulates this thought twice, once in a very complex theoretical way, another time figuratively, vividly. He writes: “Special studies show that the degree of development of concepts is the degree of transformation of the dynamics of affect, the dynamics of real action, into the dynamics of thinking. The path from contemplation to abstract thinking and from it to practical action is the path of transformation of the inert and rigid dynamics of the situation into the mobile and fluid dynamics of thought, and the path of the reverse transformation of this latter into a reasonable, expedient and free dynamics of practical action.

Thinking, understanding patterns. The mastery of concepts leads to a decrease in the connections of the visual situation, to greater freedom and mobility of the child's actions. The ability to generalize makes the child less inert and stiff, more free and flexible. Thought raises the child not only above his visual representations, but also above his own impulses and passions.

Somewhat further, speaking about the fact that in the course of the development of the child the relationship between affect and intellect changes and that it is in the change in this relationship that the maturity of the child’s personality is visible, it is along this line that differences between the mentally retarded and the normal are possible, L. S. Vygotsky writes: "Thinking can be the slave of the passions, their servant, but it can also be their master."

The thinking of a mentally retarded child cannot be considered in isolation from the sphere of his needs, interests, and orientation. But to deduce the weakness of thinking from the affective sphere, to consider affective inertness as the cause of the concreteness of thinking, is unjustified. Since the child's thinking cannot be regarded as an innate ability, since this process occurs both in the norm and in pathology during the life of the child, the reasons for its originality and its shortcomings should be sought in the very individual development of the child's thinking.

Thus, the dynamic theory of mental retardation by K. Levin, although it played a certain role in understanding this phenomenon, did not explain it.

Much more productive were Vygotsky's ideas about the nuclear signs of mental retardation caused by a painful inferiority of the brain. These nuclear signs are, apparently, the weakness of the closing function of the cortex, the inertia and weakness of the nervous processes discovered by the school of Academician IP Pavlov. In mentally retarded children, new conditioned connections, especially complex ones, are formed much more slowly than in normal children. Once formed, they are fragile and brittle. Thisweakness of the closing function of the cerebral cortex , which manifests itself in the difficult formation of new, especially complex conditioned connections, is the most important feature of the higher nervous activity of mentally retarded children. This explains the extremely slow pace of their learning. But the assimilation of any new habit means not only the formation of a new system of conditional connections, but also the differentiation of connections, i.e., the delimitation of those conditions under which habitual actions should be inhibited. As is known, for the correct formation and modification of conditioned connections, a sufficient strength of the nervous processes, i.e., the processes of excitation and inhibition, is necessary. The weakness of the excitation process causes poor closure of new conditioned connections, and the weakness of active internal inhibition determines the poor quality of differentiation. This complicates the formation of generalizations, but does not make such formation fundamentally impossible.

4.L. S. Vygotsky on visual thinking

The development of correct thinking in mentally retarded children is a difficult but fundamentally solvable task. It is achieved with the help of teaching methods specially developed by oligophrenopedagogy. One of the important issues of this training is a deliberate, methodically competent transition from visual demonstration to verbal and logical generalization.

Features of visual thinking of children of the correctional school were studied by Zh. I. Shif with the help of an experimental technique successfully found by her. An entertaining task was used, the essence of which was that the children had to find among the ten objects given to them those that could be used, i.e. play the role of mugs missing in the set of objects (first task), hammer (second task) and traffic jams (third task). The studied students of the mass school, solving this problem, first looked for the subject similarity between the existing and given objects, sometimes suggested imaginary ways of reworking, changing the objects in the set, and at the last, more difficult stage, they established the similarity on the basis of functional suitability, i.e., according to the suitability of an existing object to fulfill a new role (for example, a thimble in the role of a cup).

StudentsIIIclass of the correctional school used mainly the method of highlighting the similarity on a functional basis and did not make suggestions about the possibility of transforming objects. The pupils of the fifth grade of the correctional school were already concerned about the establishment of subject similarities, and the pupilsVIIclasses could solve the problem in two ways and find a large number of objects similar to the given ones.

From these data, Shif draws quite legitimate conclusions about the characteristics and shortcomings of visual thinking in mentally retarded children. Their visual images are not dynamic enough, they are not sufficiently transformed by the influence of the task. However, as schooling progresses, the completeness of the mental analysis of objects increases, the methods of visual thinking improve, the role of the imagination in it increases, and visual generalization becomes more accessible. Although mentally retarded children are much easier to learn everything new with the help of a specific show. Getting used to practically operating with real objects, visual aids, etc., Vygotsky warned teachers against using this feature of the psyche of mentally retarded children to build teaching methods only on the basis of the principle of visualization and rely on concrete ideas alone. Visual teaching methods are necessary, but they should not be limited. The task of the teacher is precisely to help the child to abstract from concrete ideas and move on to the highest level of cognition - logical, verbal generalization.

At the same time, a way of transition that is too fast, built on the model of a mass school, is harmful. Mistakes in teaching, attempts to teach mentally retarded children according to the model of mass schools, that is, with an unjustifiably rapid transition to verbal generalizations, sometimes become the cause of an incorrect, limited development of their thinking. V. Ya. Vasilevskaya I. M. Krasnyanskaya studied the features of the cognitive activity of students of a correctional school when comprehending visual material. They discovered that when a task is excessively difficult for a child, there is, as it were, a separation of his visual representations and verbal knowledge. As a result, verbal stereotypes arise that acquire an inert character. Only specially developed methodological techniques can help a mentally retarded child build correct, meaningful generalizations.

Consequently, one of the most important difficult problems, on the positive solution of which the optimal development of the thinking of mentally retarded children depends, is the question of the transition from visual sensory cognition to verbally formalized, logical, generalized. So far, we have considered one deficiency of thinking that is central to all mentally retarded children, namely, the weakness of generalizations, or concreteness. The thinking of students of correctional schools is also characterized by other features. Among them, in particular, is the inconsistency of thinking. This feature is especially pronounced in those mentally retarded children who are characterized by rapid fatigue. This category includes children with vascular insufficiency who have suffered trauma, rheumatism, etc. Having begun to solve a problem correctly, they often “go astray” on the right path due to an accidental mistake or accidental distraction by some impression. Such children, having prepared their homework well, may lose the thread of thought when answering and talk about something that is not related to the case. In these cases, the purposefulness of thinking is violated, although there is an interest in the good performance of this or that business, there is an adequate personal attitude towards it. It sometimes seems to the teacher that it is worth the child to want more, to try harder, and he will be able to perform certain tasks without errors. However, it is not. The fact is that the flickering nature of attention, the continuously fluctuating tone of mental activity does not give the child the opportunity to think about any issue with concentration for a long time. The result is scattered and inconsistent thoughts.

In other cases, violations of the logic of judgments arise due to excessive stiffness, viscosity of intellectual processes, a tendency to get stuck on the same particulars and details.

I. M. Solovyov, who studied the thinking of mentally retarded children when solving arithmetic problems, discovered in them a tendency to stereotypical thinking. This tendency was manifested in the fact that the children tried to solve each new problem by analogy with the previous ones. With such a "viscosity" of thinking, some illogical jumps, transitions from one to another are also inevitable. Having lingered in thought for a long time on a multitude of details, the child is nevertheless forced to move on to the next judgment; this occurs in the form of a jump, then the child again gets bogged down in details, details. Such inconsistency due to inertia is often observed in oligophrenics, but it is most pronounced in children with epilepsy and partially in those who have had encephalitis.

The next drawbackweakness of the regulating role of thinking.

Special difficulties arise for the teacher in connection with the fact that mentally retarded children do not know how to use, if necessary, already learned mental actions. The nature of this defect is less studied than it deserves.

Zh. I. Shif notes that after getting acquainted with a new task, junior grade students of a correctional school sometimes immediately begin to solve it. There are no questions in their minds that precede actions. In other words, there is no tentative stage, the importance of which is so emphasized in the works of P. Ya. Galperin. G. M. Dulnev describes how students who have received a written instruction in connection with a work assignment are satisfied with reading it once and, without asking any questions, begin to act. Only later, in the process of work, having already made mistakes, they sometimes re-read the instruction.

5. Inconsistent thinking

A new task does not cause mentally retarded children to try to imagine in their minds the course of its solution. It is known that as a result of repeated repetition of practical actions, a person is able to perform them in his mind. Standing out as an independent act, thought is able to get ahead of action, to anticipate its result. So, for example, even an elementary school student knows how to think in advance about how best to perform this or that action, what can happen if one does one way or another, what should be the result of the action. Thus, thought regulates the actions of a normal child, allows him to act expediently, to foresee this or that result. A mentally retarded child often does not think about his actions, does not foresee their result. This, as already mentioned, means that the regulatory function of thinking is weakened.

This disadvantage is closely related to the so-calleduncriticality thinking. Some mentally retarded children tend not to doubt the correctness of their newly arisen assumptions. They rarely notice their mistakes. Mentally retarded children do not even assume that their judgments and actions can be erroneous. The inability to compare one's thoughts and actions with objective reality is called uncritical thinking. This feature of thinking is more or less inherent in many mentally retarded children. It is most pronounced in children with damage or underdevelopment of the frontal lobes of the brain. Let's say a few words about children with schizophrenia. Children with schizophrenia study in correctional schools a little, since in most cases they cope with the program of the mass school. During attacks of illness in children, fears, visual and auditory deceptions (hallucinations), ridiculous thoughts, motor restlessness and numbness are observed. The main features of the psyche of schizophrenic children are growing disorders of thinking and dulling of feelings. The thoughts and reasoning of schizophrenic children are distinguished by a bizarre, abstruse character. They love to invent new words. In their actions, they are sometimes guided by various obscure considerations. Another distinctive feature of the psyche of schizophrenic children is the growing emotional dullness. They rarely have friends and girlfriends, sometimes they treat their parents badly, they do not respond to the cordial attitude of the teacher. Educators are not always able to establish close contact with them. However, we must definitely try to include these children in the life of the children's team.

Some oligophrenopedagoguesXIXin. proposed to develop the thinking of children with the help of special exercises and training in solving problems such as puzzles. The beneficial effects of special exercises cannot be denied. However, such exercises play only a supporting role. The main way of developing the thinking of mentally retarded children is the way of systematic mastery of knowledge and skills corresponding to the school curriculum. It is by studying various academic subjects, solving problems, reading books and getting used to correctly formulate their thoughts orally and in writing, that the child learns to analyze, generalize, draw conclusions and check their correctness, i.e., learns to think.

Literature

1. Vygotsky L. S. Problems of mental retardation. In the book: Selected psychological studies, M., 1956. P. 453 480.

2. Features of the mental development of secondary school students / Ed. J. Shif. M., 1956, p. 217 299, ch. 6.

3. Rubinshtein S. L. About thinking and ways of its research. M., 1958., 289s.

4. Rubinshtein S. Ya. Psychology of a mentally retarded schoolchild. M., 1986., 192s.

5. Sinev V. N., Bilevich E. A. On the development of thinking of secondary school students in manual labor lessons. In: Clinical and psychological study of children with intellectual disabilities. M., 1976., 187p.