Sample of psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with mental retardation

Mental retardation is a special mental condition in which intellectual development is limited by a reduced level of functioning of the central nervous system. In the vast majority of cases, the problem manifests itself in childhood. A retarded child can only develop to the level to which he is limited. The most common is mild degree of UO. It is the least dangerous and can be cured with timely treatment. It is important for all parents to know the features and signs of mild mental retardation so that at the slightest suspicion they can consult a doctor as quickly as possible.

General characteristics

Mild mental retardation in children or mental retardation is the most common pathological mental disorder among such diseases. This form of underdevelopment is also known in medical circles as debility. But this name has lost its relevance due to social unacceptability. Children who have been diagnosed with this condition, despite the prejudices imposed by the public, have every chance of leading an independent life in the future.

Qualities and skills that are usually inherent in identifying mental retardation:

perception of basic abilities in a special education program;
mastering writing, reading and counting skills at a basic level;
fairly good mechanical memory;
concrete visual methods of comprehending information;
acquisition of certain labor skills;
gradual progress in mental development.

Mental retardation affects the formation of cognitive processes, logical thinking and motivational influence. A mild form of deviation allows over time, although not to reach the level of one’s peers, at least to master the skills necessary for life.

Classification, forms and reasons

UD is one of the subtypes of mental dysontogenesis. This concept refers to disorders of the central nervous system and psyche. Doctors distinguish several degrees:

UO degree	IQ	Mental age
Lightweight	50-69	9-12 years
Moderate	35-49	6-9 years
Heavy	20-34	3-6 years
Deep	<20	Up to 3 years

According to ICD 10, mild degree of UR has code F70. It is the most common and difficult to detect. Children behave the same as others, and deviations are not so noticeable. Many parents don't even give them any importance. With proper training, a child or adult with mild retardation can study, work, and communicate with other people.

There are two forms of retardation: mental retardation and dementia.

Mental retardation

A distinctive feature of this form is damage to the cerebral cortex in a child under 3 years of age, which causes developmental delays. Oligophrenia is divided into three types: debility, imbecility, idiocy.

Mild mental retardation corresponds to debility. It, in turn, is divided into several more types:

Uncomplicated. It is distinguished by a reduced level of cognitive processes, while the emotional component is normal.
Complicated by disturbances of various analyzers. Along with a lag in intellectual development, the child experiences secondary deviations, which manifest themselves in the form of deterioration in hearing and vision or problems with speech, when the baby cannot learn to speak for a long time.
Complicated by neurodynamic disorders. This type of debilitation is accompanied by problems with coordination of movements, which is caused by damage to the cerebral cortex, as well as extremely rapid fatigue.
With severe frontal insufficiency. A child suffering from this type of retardation finds it difficult to navigate in space, he lacks motivation in behavior and has very sluggish hands, he speaks in a stereotyped manner, imitating other people.
With psychopathic forms of behavior. Children with this type of mental retardation are very irritable, restless, and hysterical. They cannot get along with their peers, they often fight and swear. There is no self-control.

Oligophrenia can occur in the first three years of a child’s life and is often congenital. Sometimes it is not possible to detect it immediately, but only after several years. It is this problem that makes treatment more difficult. There are several reasons for its appearance:

Infectious diseases suffered by the mother during pregnancy;
Incompatibility of mother and child by Rh factor;
Birth injuries in newborns;
Heredity, mental retardation of one of the parents;
Alcoholism or drug addiction of parents.

With the right approach to training and treating such a child, the chances of a normal life will be quite high.

Various diseases that affect intellectual development can be inherited. Then mental retardation may manifest itself in a significant way only after a few years.

Dementia

Dementia is understood as organic damage to the human brain after birth and the full development of the central nervous system. Acquired problems with intellectual activity, as a rule, are more serious and immediately represent a moderate or severe stage of ID. However, in some cases of dementia, the mental retardation is mild and may not be as noticeable. A person can purchase a license for the following reasons:

Brain injuries;
Meningitis or other infectious diseases;
Schizophrenia;
Epilepsy, stroke.

Dementia manifests itself in the same way as mental retardation. The difference is solely in the root causes and the average age when the disease is detected.

Features of behavior

Since all children differ from each other in temperament, manner of communication and behavior, it is difficult to visually determine the mental retardation of a child, and even more so to do this at an early age. But still, with a more detailed study of children's relationships, one can notice signs of mental underdevelopment. These include:

lack of interest in animals, new, colorful objects or toys;
weak contact with peers;
misunderstanding of the requirements of the game;
lack of incentives for intellectual development, characteristic of children at an early age;
increased desire for physical activity, unfocused games;
expression of emotions only through primitive reactions, instability of mental state;
problems with mastering self-care skills.

Children with mild mental retardation develop weakened attention over time and have difficulty concentrating thoughts in a certain direction. Mental performance slows down, and it is difficult for the child to navigate in society. The baby gets tired quickly and doesn’t know what to do next.

The connection of a little person with reality occurs through auditory, visual, visual and other processes. Since their processing is not fully accessible to the brain, the perception of the surrounding world is distorted.

Causes of mild mental retardation in children

The cause of any mental retardation is damage to the brain. The most severe structural defects manifest themselves in underdevelopment of the brain.

The main reasons causing the development of mental retardation in children can be grouped into the following groups:

Heredity (gene and chromosomal diseases). This group includes: various syndromes (for example, Down, Turner); forms associated with hereditary metabolic disorders, neurological diseases;
Exposure to harmful factors during intrauterine development: intrauterine infections (for example, rubella, toxoplasmosis, etc.), intoxication (alcohol intake, substances toxic to the fetus), hemolytic disease of the fetus, etc.;
Factors that were exposed during childbirth or at an early age (birth injuries, oxygen deprivation, trauma, infections);
Pedagogical neglect , which occurs against the background of full-fledged brain function, but in the absence of full education and socialization;
The presence of several causes at once, mixed states.

Alcoholism in pregnant women, according to a number of authors, is the most common cause of mild mental retardation in children.

Mental retardation in children under 3 years of age, symptoms and psychological characteristics of children with mental retardation

The diagnosis of mental retardation in children can be officially made no earlier than 7 years of age. However, it is important to understand that there are symptoms of mild mental retardation in children, which can be used to suspect its presence in early childhood, up to 3 years.

Mild mental retardation in children, signs:

The child lags behind in motor development: he begins to hold his head up, sit down, stand up, and walk late. The baby's grasping reflex may be impaired, and at 1-1.5 years the child still does not hold objects (toys, spoon and fork);
Speech is absent or appears very late; the child has difficulty constructing phrases and coherent speech. At 2-3 years old, the baby poorly understands speech addressed to him and cannot follow basic instructions;
Mild mental retardation in children is characterized by an imbalance in the processes of nervous excitation and inhibition; This is expressed in excessive impulsiveness, lack of restraint, excitability, irritability or, conversely, lethargy and slowness;
The child shows no interest in the world around him and seems withdrawn; His emotional-volitional sphere is “impoverished”;
There is no story game. The games are primitive in content, the toys may not be of interest to the child or he may not use them for their intended purpose.

Types of diagnostics

Some experts believe that determining a child’s mental retardation as a diagnosis before the age of seven is impossible. Only after this period can we talk about any developmental deviations, since the child’s psyche can be formed in a completely unpredictable way.

Periods of active development are followed by long pauses, and these cycles can be repeated regularly. You should seek help from specialists when violations are noticeable in areas such as:

memory;
intelligence;
thinking;
emotional sphere;
cognitive functions;
volitional manifestations;
coordination and plasticity of movements;
ability to fix attention.

The degree of mental retardation is diagnosed according to three criteria:

Clinical picture indicated by damage to brain centers.
Persistent psychological disturbance of the desire for cognitive activity.
Low level of learning ability.

A very important factor when performing diagnostic procedures to determine oligophrenia is an ophthalmological examination and X-ray computed tomography of the brain. An eye examination allows you to recognize at the early stages of development such concomitant diseases as:

retinal pigment degeneration;
glaucoma;
cataract;
microdisturbances of visual nerve endings;
intracranial hypertension.

A tomograph helps to determine hidden deviations in the structure of the skull, the presence of intracranial pressure, and brain pathologies.

Determining the level of development

Children diagnosed with retardation are able to adapt quite quickly to those around them. It is possible for them to attend kindergarten or primary school on general terms, without a special program. Of course, they are not able to achieve any special success, but mastering the necessary minimum of knowledge is quite possible.

However, psychiatrists still recommend training children with mild retardation in specialized educational institutions. Now they are called schools of the eighth type, and their program fully corresponds to this intellectual level.

A child with a slight mental retardation commits actions that lack any purpose or motivation. His behavior is dominated by:

the desire to imitate, copy actions;
lack of independence, naivety and suggestibility;
depending on the situation or circumstances.

Many parents are afraid to send a child with such disabilities to a special school, explaining that the child will be better off in a calm family environment. By expressing such judgments, they reassure themselves, while depriving the child of a chance for a full existence in society.

Work with mentally retarded children should be carried out by specialists together with parents and be aimed at activating the main lines of intellectual development. To do this, parents need to thoroughly study the baby’s behavior in various situations, his habits and characteristics. Based on these observations, the level of development is established.

Features of mental development and thinking in children with mental retardation

Any child with mental retardation is different from another with the same diagnosis, due to the fact that each has its own characteristics of brain function, immaturity or deficiency of its structures and sections, as well as intact links.

L.S. Vygotsky believed that the primary defect of mental retardation is inertia, stiffness of the main nervous processes, as well as weakness of orienting activity, which underlies the child’s reduced activity and lack of interest in the world around him. A secondary defect is underdevelopment of higher mental functions. In turn, when a child finds himself in conditions of an inadequate teaching and educational environment, opportunities arise for the development of a tertiary level defect, namely, behavioral disorders and characteristics of the emotional-volitional sphere. In addition, the following features can be highlighted:

Most authors prove that cognitive disorders in such children consist of difficulties in forming concepts and generalizations, difficulty in abstract thinking;
A child with mental retardation is poorly taught; it is difficult for him to perceive any new information;
As the child grows up, all of the above is accompanied by a poverty of outlook and superficiality of thinking.

General condition of the child

Unexpressed mental retardation may have virtually no effect on physical development. Children with intellectual pathologies are able to achieve success in many sports disciplines. By directing their efforts in the right direction and not focusing on shortcomings, they will be able to take their place in society.

The emotional background in mental retardation is very unstable; it is difficult for a child to control his feelings, or rather, the transitions from one state to another. According to his age, he experiences different sensations:

joy;
delight;
sadness;
irritation;
anger, etc.

Such children lack a sense of compassion and spiritual understanding of the emotions of others. They cannot think about events or their consequences in the future. The life of a child with mild mental retardation happens here and now. He doesn't worry about what will happen tomorrow.

Such a child has weak manifestations of volitional efforts. In other words, it is as if he agreed to some action, but cannot bring himself to do it, while he himself cannot explain the reason for his behavior.

Special class

Svetlana Yuryevna, today almost all our schools have become inclusive. They accept visually impaired, hearing impaired children, and students with cerebral palsy. Are mass schools ready to teach children with mental retardation?

Svetlana Ilyina

: Not all such children can and should be taught in regular schools. Unfortunately, most parents believe that it will be better if their child goes to a regular class. In reality this is not the case. Most likely, he will find himself without correctional support and the child will not progress in development.

There are about 30 correctional schools for children with mental retardation in St. Petersburg, plus schools for children with mental retardation in every district of the city. Children with mild and moderate mental retardation study in correctional schools. Classes for students with mild mental retardation are called "Special Child". These are difficult children and every year there are more and more such classes. Children with mild degrees are not disabled. You will never tell them apart in life, and if they were in a correctional school, then, as a rule, they adapt very successfully, use computers, communicate, and no problems arise.

And if you go up to someone like that at school and say: hit that guy on the head - he’s bad. Will it hit?

Svetlana Ilyina

: They are, of course, suggestible, but not to that extent. Children with moderate mental retardation, of course, are less aware of this, but they are, as a rule, mentally sane. They often have parents with higher education, and they strive to create the most favorable conditions for the child.

What can children be taught in a correctional school? Where is the “ceiling” for them - fractions, multiplication tables, reading Prishvin and Paustovsky? Or can they complete the high school curriculum, it just takes a lot longer?

Svetlana Ilyina

: Correctional schools have their own program. There are not only multiplication tables, but also addition, subtraction of fractions, history of the Fatherland, geography, and natural science. The range of objects is quite large. But the main thing is socialization, acquiring skills that will help later in life, and there is a special subject - “the fundamentals of social life.” Such schools have classrooms with a stove, refrigerator, washing machine, and living room. Children are taught everything from tying shoelaces to using technology. The most important thing is to develop self-service skills, teach how to choose goods, and make purchases. Children can study in correctional schools for 13 years; after graduating from school or while studying, they can attend rehabilitation centers, where classes are also held. You can be there for five years or more.

What's next? Are they taught professions?

Svetlana Ilyina

: Children with mild mental retardation can go to college and get a profession, such as seamstresses. They work as landscapers, sorters, and can perform simple mechanical work. With a moderate degree it is more difficult to find a job.

What can children be taught in a correctional school? Where is the “ceiling” for them - fractions, multiplication tables, reading Prishvin and Paustovsky?

Nowadays, many schools have autistic children. Do they have mental retardation?

Svetlana Ilyina

: Autism is a peculiar deviation of the emotional-volitional sphere. They have difficulty making contact with other people and are very protective of their space. It's easier for them with a computer. They allow him to come to them and can work miracles, coping with various tasks very easily. Not always, but often autism spectrum disorders are accompanied by mental retardation. We have a classification of autism with four groups. The fourth group are children who may have moderate or severe mental retardation.

And the brilliant autistic people we sometimes hear about, are they the first or the second group? There is a well-known university where such students study. They don’t know how to get to the cafeteria, but they can solve problems that their classmates are not suitable for.

Svetlana Ilyina

: Genius is also a deviation from the norm. We simply give people with genius a “plus” sign, but we can give everyone else a “minus”.

There was a case in Moscow when a student brought a weapon and shot the teacher. Then it turned out he had schizophrenia. Is this diagnosis difficult to recognize?

Svetlana Ilyina

: Schizophrenia is not mental retardation; intelligence may not suffer. But a competent teacher can notice oddities in behavior: such children have peculiarities of speech development. They speak a lot, for a long time, in grammatically complex sentences. But there is nothing behind the phrases. If you ask them to quickly draw a house, they will draw every window... Now pedagogical universities are moving to new educational standards, and all faculties will teach a course on inclusive education, including about children with mental and mental disabilities.

It turns out that many famous people have “special” children? Is there any explanation for this?

Svetlana Ilyina

: There are many reasons why such a child appears in a family: genetic disorders, difficult pregnancy, rubella that the mother suffered during pregnancy, the age of the parents. After 35 years, expectant mothers must be kept under special close monitoring. After 40 years of age, the risk is very high. Foreign statistics show: if a mother gives birth after 40 years, then out of 10 children 7-8 may have various disabilities.

By what signs can parents understand that something is wrong with their child?

Svetlana Ilyina

: By the age of three, a child should be able to hold a spoon, use it, be able to walk, and sit. An important indicator is speech development. If a child at three years old speaks in separate words, then this is a serious signal to turn to specialists. And not only to a speech therapist, but also to a psychiatrist. At this age, the child should speak in simple phrasal speech. It’s important how he folds a matryoshka doll, plays with blocks, whether he knows how to play in general, and how he accepts help.

Formation of the speech apparatus

It is by speech disorders that the degree of mental retardation in children can be determined. The easy form assumes a fairly large vocabulary, although it is used with a violation of the semantic load. The conversation consists of short, monosyllabic phrases that the child hears most often in his environment. It is possible to use individual words and expressions only out of habit, at random.

Memorizing new words and definitions must be accompanied by visual or tactile confirmation. But still, this happens slowly and not fully.

Speech development directly depends on the degree of mental retardation of the child. The mild form is characterized by incorrect pronunciation of some letters of the alphabet. The presence of speech defects such as:

dysarthria;
stuttering;
tongue-tied.

With such problems, classes with a speech therapist have a positive dynamic, but the recovery process is very difficult and lengthy.

Diagnosis of mild mental retardation in children

The diagnosis of mental retardation is based on the establishment of a mental defect, the main place in which is occupied by the underdevelopment of intellectual and higher mental functions, as well as the absence of signs of progression of underdevelopment.

In order to determine the severity of a mental defect and its leading link, special psychological methods for assessing intelligence are used. Neuropsychological diagnostics are also carried out, which helps not only to determine the level of development of higher mental functions of a child with mental retardation, but also to see his current and potential capabilities (those strengths that can be relied upon in the correction and treatment of mental retardation).

Mild mental retardation must be distinguished from diagnoses caused by mental illness (for example, schizophrenia) and severe pedagogical neglect.

Intelligence level

The intellectual development quotient, as a rule, ranges from 69 to 50 points. This is quite high, whereas mild mental retardation in children allows them to have an IQ of 49 to 35.

Having a sense of humor is a big problem. Such children perceive everything concretely and literally. Metaphors and aphorisms used by the interlocutor in a conversation are just words without meaning for them.

The main sign of a child with mental retardation is the absence of abstract logical thinking. How is this expressed?

inability to highlight the main thing and cut off the unnecessary;
the impossibility of classification and generalization;
primitiveness of thinking.

Quite simple questions drive the child into a dead end; there is practically no logic in the reasoning. By repeating actions many times, he can grasp the pattern and, by analogy, continue the thought. However, the slightest deviation from the pattern causes difficulties.

Symptoms

With mild mental retardation, the child's IQ does not exceed 69 units. There are practically no external differences from peers. In most cases, the problem makes itself felt during training or communication. A feature of this degree of retardation is a fairly good memory, as well as awareness of one’s condition. Almost everyone who suffers from mild stroke tries to hide their problem.

The symptoms are always the same. The differences between different clinical cases are minimal. This allows you to quickly determine if there is a problem. Symptoms of mental retardation in young children are as follows:

Development occurs with a noticeable delay, which is manifested in longer learning to hold the head, crawl, walk and other motor skills;
A delay in the development of the emotional component is diagnosed, which manifests itself in the fact that the baby experiences very few emotions that appear very briefly, and he also begins to smile much later;
There is no understanding of exactly how to play with certain toys; often the child uses them in a specific way;
Such children begin to speak only after 3 years, while they have a very limited vocabulary and their speech is slurred;
The child does not distinguish himself from others, and also cannot clearly formulate his thoughts.

Older children with mental retardation stand out more than others. Their behavior corresponds to younger ages, which makes it possible to quickly recognize the presence of CVD. As these children grow older, new symptoms appear:

Difficulty participating in team games;
Apathy, irritability, aggression manifests itself;
Lack of understanding of role-playing games, difficulty simulating unrealistic situations in life;
Poor concentration, absent-mindedness. Such children prefer to perform monotonous actions that do not require active brain activity;
Low creativity, lack of imagination and sense of humor, children cannot see the hidden meaning in proverbs and fairy tales;
Problems with accurately remembering long phrases, because... they suffer from memory limitations;
Simple interests, including watching TV, reading fairy tales, playing video games;
They are easily influenced by others and like to imitate other people.

In most cases, the symptoms are the same; only some of them may be absent. With mild UO, which persists in an adult since childhood, all symptoms remain.

A patient with UO will not be drafted into the army, will not be given a driver's license, and will not be allowed to enter the civil service.

Attention and memory disorder

All healthy children have semantic and mechanical memory. In a state of mental retardation, a child simply does not have a semantic memory, while the mechanical one is well developed. Without semantic memory it is impossible to perform the following actions:

remembering the essence;
summarizing the information received;
retelling the text in your own words.

At the same time, the formed mechanical memory allows you to remember large amounts of information, but since this is done unconsciously, the child cannot use it.

In order to somehow develop the semantic perception of information, you need to be patient and explain to your child several times what he cannot understand. Noticeable progress in memorization can be achieved by clearly showing the cause-and-effect relationships of objects and actions. It is much easier for a child with mild mental retardation to remember simple and understandable things than those whose meaning and purpose are unknown to him.

Characteristics of a child with mental retardation

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

Underdevelopment of cognitive processes.

Children with mental retardation have less need for cognition than their typically developing peers. The French doctor E. Seguin said that “the oligophrenic knows nothing, cannot and does not want.” Their experience is extremely poor. They have an incomplete, sometimes distorted idea of the surrounding reality. New material is learned only after numerous repetitions.

Perception

often suffers from hearing loss, vision loss, and speech underdevelopment. But even if the analyzers are intact, the generality of perception is impaired. Perception is characterized by a slower pace - it takes more time to perceive a picture or text. Due to mental underdevelopment, they have difficulty identifying the main thing and do not understand the internal connections between parts and characters.

Perception is not differentiated enough. When teaching, this manifests itself in the fact that students often confuse graphically similar letters, numbers, objects, similar-sounding sounds, words, etc.

Characterized by a narrow scope of perception. Mentally retarded children snatch out individual parts in an observed object or in a listened text, sometimes without seeing or hearing the material that is important for general understanding.

The selectivity of perception is impaired, it is not active enough; Passivity of perception lies in the fact that children do not know how to peer, do not know how to independently examine a picture, they need constant coercion. Therefore, the possibility of further understanding of the material is reduced.

The perception of a mentally retarded child must be managed; in educational activities, this leads to the fact that children, without stimulating questions from the teacher, cannot complete a task that is understandable to them. Mentally retarded children experience difficulties in perceiving space and time, which makes it difficult to navigate their surroundings. Often, even at 8-9 years old, they cannot distinguish between the right and left sides, they cannot find their classroom, toilet, or cafeteria at school; make mistakes when determining the time on the clock, days of the week, seasons. Children poorly recognize the relationships of events in time and space; the concepts “earlier”, “later”, “to the right”, “to the left” are difficult for them to grasp. Mentally retarded children begin to distinguish colors much later than their normally developing peers; Distinguishing shades of color is particularly difficult.

Thinking

The thought processes of mentally retarded children are slow and inert. Abstract thinking does not develop at all; children remain at the level of concrete concepts. Concepts more often generalize unimportant characteristics of objects and phenomena. It is more difficult to understand abstract connections that are not based on direct perception, as well as the sequence of events. Children do not understand the cause-and-effect relationships between objects and phenomena; they only understand the connections between phenomena based on visual experience.

The weakness of logical thinking is manifested in the low level of development of generalization and comparison of objects and phenomena according to essential features, in the inability to understand the figurative meaning of proverbs and metaphors, and in the inability to operate with generic and specific concepts. All mental operations are not sufficiently formed and have peculiar features.

Children carry out analysis haphazardly, miss a number of important properties, isolating only the most noticeable parts, and find it difficult to determine connections between parts of an object. Due to the imperfection of the analysis, the synthesis of objects is difficult. By identifying individual parts in them, children do not establish connections between them, and therefore find it difficult to form an idea of the subject as a whole.

Unable to highlight the main thing in objects and phenomena, comparisons are made based on unimportant characteristics, and often on incomparable ones. It is difficult to establish differences in similar objects and common features in differences. For example, when comparing a pen and a pencil, they say: “They are similar in that they are long, and they also have the same skin.” The usual task for younger schoolchildren - to compare two similar objects in size, volume, weight - is not completed by the child. In order to achieve a positive result, you need to give both objects into his hands, placing them one next to the other.

They perceive the similarity of objects more easily than their differences due to the weakness of differential inhibition. First of all, they learn the similar and most specific characteristics of objects, for example their purpose. It takes several years to move from such visual-effective teaching to visual-figurative teaching, which operates not with the objects themselves, but with ideas about them.

The thinking of mentally retarded children is characterized by uncriticality and the inability to independently evaluate their work; they often do not notice their mistakes. This is especially evident in imbeciles - they do not understand their failures, they are satisfied with themselves and their work.

Children with mental retardation are characterized by a weak regulatory role of thinking: they usually begin to do work without listening to the instructions, without understanding the purpose of the task, without an internal plan of action, with weak self-control. When solving a problem, children often replace it with untargeted manipulation of the original data. The pace of thinking is slow, there is no possibility of transferring the learned method of action to new conditions.

Underdevelopment of thinking affects the development of other cognitive processes. Due to disruption of the analytical-synthetic activity of the brain in perception, attention, and memory, the functions of generalization and distraction suffer. In the emotional-volitional sphere, this manifests itself in a lack of complex emotions and voluntary forms of behavior.

Memory.

Children with mental retardation better remember external, sometimes random, visually perceived signs. It is more difficult to recognize and remember internal logical connections; voluntary memorization is formed later than in normal children. Memory weakness manifests itself not so much in the difficulties of obtaining and storing information, but in the difficulties of its reproduction, since reproduction is a process that requires volitional activity and focus. Due to a lack of understanding of the logic of events, the reproduction is unsystematic.

Children experience the greatest difficulty in reproducing verbal material. Indirect, semantic memory is poorly developed.

A feature of the memory of mentally retarded children is episodic forgetfulness associated with overwork of the nervous system due to its general weakness. More often than normal peers, mentally retarded people experience a state of protective inhibition.

Children experience difficulties in reproducing images of perception - ideas. Representations are characterized by undifferentiation and fragmentation.

Imagination

characterized by fragmentation, inaccuracy, and sketchiness due to the poverty of life experience and imperfect mental operations.

Attention.

Attention is characterized by low stability, difficulties in distribution, and slow switchability. Basically, voluntary attention is underdeveloped, although involuntary attention also suffers. This is due to the fact that mentally retarded children, when difficulties arise, do not try to overcome them, but, as a rule, quit work. If the work is interesting and feasible, it will maintain children's attention without requiring much stress from them.

The weakness of voluntary attention is also manifested in the fact that during the learning process there is a frequent change of objects of attention. Children cannot concentrate on any one object or activity.

Emotional-volitional sphere.

Emotions are underdeveloped: there are no shades of experiences. Emotions are unstable (a state of joy without any particular reason is replaced by sadness, laughter by tears). Experiences are shallow and superficial. Some children have inappropriate emotional reactions. There are cases of either increased emotional excitability or pronounced emotional decline (euphoria, dysphoria, apathy).

For mentally retarded children, only immediate experiences are relevant; they often cannot assess the possible consequences of certain events and actions. Emotions, as well as thinking, are characterized by inertia and insufficient switchability.

The volitional sphere is characterized by the weakness of one’s own intentions, motives, and great suggestibility. In work, mentally retarded people prefer the easy way, which does not require volitional efforts. In activities, imitation, impulsive actions, and an inability to suppress immediate instincts are often observed. There is no independence, sense of purpose, or initiative. Due to the overwhelming demands, some children develop negativism and stubbornness.

Activity.

Children have not developed learning skills. Purposeful activity is underdeveloped, there are difficulties in independently planning one’s own activities. Motivation is characterized by instability, scarcity, and situationality.

Mentally retarded children begin work without prior orientation in it and are not guided by the ultimate goal; As a result, in the course of work they often deviate from the correct execution of actions. At the same time, they slip into actions performed earlier, and transfer them unchanged, not taking into account the fact that they are dealing with a different task. This departure from the set goal is observed when difficulties arise, as well as in cases when the immediate motives of activity are leading. Children do not correlate the result obtained with the task that was set before them, and therefore cannot correctly evaluate its solution.

They are not critical of their work. The skills of simple reading and writing are acquired very slowly, and for complete assimilation the task must be repeated many times over 10 - 20 days, although mechanical memory usually does not suffer with debility.

Personality.

Interests, needs and motives of behavior are primitive, the predominant ones being elementary organic needs (sleep, food, sexual needs); Due to the reduced control function of the brain, their motivational power increases over the years.

General activity is reduced. It is difficult to form proper relationships with peers and adults. There is no flexibility, stereotypical behavior. It is difficult to form abstract concepts of good and evil, a sense of duty, and the ability to self-control and predict the consequences of one’s actions.

The development of abilities and compensatory capabilities is limited. Self-awareness is characterized by uncriticism towards one’s own and others’ actions, inadequate self-esteem and an inadequate level of aspirations.

From source: Yu.V. Saenko “Special Psychology” https://www.klex.ru/hxn

Specifics of education

It is very important to find the right approach to a child with such a disease. Usually this is not difficult to do, since such children are simple-minded and kind. The main task of parents is to correctly set priorities in raising a special child. The amount of acquired knowledge here fades into the background, and preference should be given to completely different values:

creating a comfortable, favorable, calm environment in the family;
the desire for love and understanding;
devoting a large amount of time to communicating with the child;
the formation of a socially adapted personality, ready for independent life outside the home.

In suitable conditions, such children successfully master the basics of reading, writing and counting, and learn basic work skills. They are happy to carry out simple tasks, help with household chores, and do handicrafts.

With mild retardation, good results are achieved by friendly conversations with the child, educational games, and reading books. Constant communication and systematic intellectual activities protect the brain from degradation and stimulate the development of intellectual activity. The baby enjoys such activities and over time takes the initiative.

The correct behavior of the mother plays a huge role in raising a child. Having discovered any abnormalities in their own child, any normal parent will be horrified and begin to panic. This, as you know, does not give any results, so the best solution would be to contact a specialist. Correcting the moral and psychological state of the mother is the key to a happy future child.

If parents are interested in the maximum development of their mentally retarded child, then they must make every effort to find the necessary methods and techniques for interacting with his psyche. In any case, you will need the help of specialists: both for training and for establishing contacts with others.