mental retardation is one of the most common forms of mental pathology in childhood. More often it is detected early training of the child in preparatory group of a kindergarten or school, especially at the age of 7-10 years, as this age period provides greater diagnostic capabilities.
the Main reason for the lag in development of mental activity of the child are mild organic brain damage ( congenital or obtained in utero, at birth and in early life) and functional disorders of mental activity.
mental retardation is manifested in the discrepancy between the intellectual abilities of the child according to age. Most mental functions ( spatial representation, thinking, speech, etc.) have a complex structure and is based on interaction of several functional systems. The formation of such interactions in children with mental retardation not only slowed, but has changed considerably differently than normally developing.
Children are not able ( without special assistance) to master counting, reading and writing. It is difficult to observe the rules of conduct. They have difficulties in any activities of the organization: not able to consistently comply with the instructions, to switch on the instruction of the teacher from one job to another. Students with mental retardation quickly become fatigued, their efficiency decreases, and sometimes they just cease to perform the operation started.
decreased performance and instability of attention in children in this category have a variety of individual forms of expression. So, in some children the maximum tension and the highest efficiency is found at the beginning of the job and steadily decreasing as you continue to work; others - the greatest focusing occurs after a certain period, there have been periodic fluctuations in attention and uneven performance throughout the execution of the entire job.
Especially the attention of children with mental retardation are manifested in its instability, increased distractibility, erratic concentration on the object. The presence of extraneous stimuli causes a significant slowdown in the functions they perform activities, and increases the number of errors.
in children with mental retardation is observed lower ( compared to the norm ) the level of development of perception that is manifested in the failure of the limited, fragmented knowledge about the world, the difficulties in the recognition of objects in continuous view, contour and schematics, especially if they crossed or overlap each other. They are not always recognized and often mixed was similar in shape of letters and their individual elements, often erroneously perceive a combination of letters, etc.
all children with mental retardation are observed and the faults of memory : and these deficiencies affect all types of memory : implausible and arbitrary, short and long term. First and foremost, they have limited memory and reduced the strength of memorization. This applies to memorization as a visual and ( especially) verbal material, which can not affect performance.
a Significant backlog and originality found in the development of mental activity. The only exception is a letter under the dictation or the copying of the text. The early schooling of these children, as a rule, formed the basic mental operations - analysis, synthesis, comparison. generalization. Showed a reduction in cognitive activity. One of the psychological characteristics of children with mental retardation is that they are lagging in the development of all types of thinking. At the highest level is detected during tasks involving the use of verbal-logical thinking. Significantly behind children's development of visual-figurative thinking. It is especially difficult for them to operate in the mind of the parts of the image. The least behind in their development of clearly - effective thinking.
Different from the norm, and the speech of children with mental retardation. Many of them inherent defects of sound pronunciation, there is poor vocabulary. When you use their words, they often make mistakes related to inaccurate and sometimes incorrect understanding of the meaning of words. Students with mental retardation have a poor command of grammatical generalizations in their speech is often incorrect grammar. These children almost no use of some grammatical categories, have difficulties in understanding and use of complex logical - grammatical constructions.
a Peculiar and behavior of children with DSD. In school they continue to behave like preschoolers. The educational motivation they have no or very poorly expressed, is not observed positive attitude to school.
the Leading activity for the game. By the beginning of systematic training in children with mental retardation is not formed the highest form of play activities - role-playing game, which, essentially, prepares the child to implement new activity - training. Even if the organization of the game or older normally developing peers, these children are not always able to fulfil their role, moving from one role to another or begin to carry out manipulative activities.
