Development of cognitive processes in preschool children

How does this happen

The development of cognitive processes in preschool children is subject to a number of patterns.

The child begins not only to contemplate the objects around him, but begins to show a keen interest in them. He begins to understand that every thing has size, shape, color and many other distinctive features; they feel different to the touch and have different temperatures. Over time, in addition to vision and touch, the child begins to develop hearing. He gradually learns to identify and compare sounds by volume.

The first stage is the development of sensory cognition

Gradually, the child begins to regulate sensory processes by looking at something or listening to something. Attention and perception develop; sensory processes become more conscious.

However, the development of cognitive processes, both at younger and older ages in preschoolers, is still far from perfect. For example, it has been noticed that children do not immediately begin to understand perspective, as well as other spatial relationships. Difficulty perceiving time.

Let's consider how exactly the cognitive processes of preschoolers should develop, and how a parent can help a child master the complex, but amazing and mysterious world around him.

Attention in preschool age

It is worth noting that the attention of preschoolers is still involuntary. The child distinguishes objects from the total mass depending on their brightness, contrast, and difference from the main background. And only later does it acquire the features of intentionality. The parent begins to notice that the child prefers to strictly observe certain objects on which his activity is directed. Now he sees not only what is catchy, new and bright, but what is of interest to him.

Test for knowledge of names of objects

Despite the fact that in the preschool period the development and improvement of both involuntary and voluntary attention occurs, the main emphasis should be placed on the development of the second.

In order to teach a child to highlight the significant, “pushing” the less significant into the background, it is necessary to take into account the following.

For the development of voluntary attention, it is necessary that the child’s activity be directed. That is, when starting to carry out this or that activity, he must have a fairly clear idea of the desired result. This will allow the child to keep his attention on it and control distractions in the process.
Considering that at first it will be difficult for a child to carry out directed activities independently, at first he will need fairly simple, but clear and detailed instructions from an adult. Thanks to this, he will be able to get an idea not only of the goal, but also of the ways to achieve it. It is most desirable that the stages on the way to achieving it - small tasks and their results - be presented clearly. For example, when asking a child to do some kind of craft, it is best to do it with him, showing preliminary results and allowing the child to compare what he did with the standard. This will keep the child’s attention for a long time and keep it until the very end.

Attentiveness test for 6-year-old children
Voluntary attention of preschoolers develops on the basis of involuntary attention. That is why the objects that children will deal with during classes should be bright, unusual, novel, or of interest to him.

Memory development in preschool age

A kind of “starting point” for the development of voluntary memory in a child is considered to be the age of three years. It is from this period that most people begin to remember events related to their lives. However, memory in preschool age also has its own distinctive features. Firstly, like many other cognitive processes at this stage, it is involuntary. The child cannot yet control it, and memorization obeys a simple law: of all the stimuli affecting the child, only one, but the strongest, is remembered. Secondly, the child’s memory is situational in nature - when remembering something, the child can mention the circumstances accompanying the memorization process.

Development of attentiveness and motor skills in the game

It is involuntary memorization that has the most significant impact on the child’s activities.

However, the features of the development of cognitive memory processes in preschoolers are already beginning to be distinguished by the following features:

Isolating the object of memorization from the memorization situation itself
Using reliance on the sequence of events and building simple logical connections.
Strength of memory and the ability to retain information in memory for a certain time.
Using the simplest elements of voluntary memorization.

Studying nature develops memory
Just like for developing any other processes, first you need to use bright, contrasting objects. And also gradually move from visual objects to the perception of memorized material by ear. Excellent tools for the development of auditory memory in the preschool period are learning short children's poems and retelling the plot of favorite fairy tales.

Towards the end of preschool childhood, the child begins to show the rudiments of logical memory, which is built on the child’s understanding of the connections that exist between objects and phenomena. Now the child can remember larger amounts of information and more effectively apply the experience gained in practice.

Imagination in the preschool period

Despite the fact that children are always distinguished by a bright, developed imagination, this ability to process and recombine existing information does not come to them immediately.

At the very beginning of its development, imagination is built on joint work with the parent. And only then it is transformed into a process carried out on the basis of speech without the need to carry out any physical actions.

Modeling with plasticine develops imagination

In order for the imagination to be formed as effectively as possible, it is advisable for an adult to complement the images created by the child with specific details, giving them completeness. Then the child begins to “complete” the elements independently, combining the disparate elements of the picture into a single whole. And, perceiving information by ear, he learns to present it in the form of a visual, sensory or any other image. The child learns objectification and substitution. This feature of preschoolers is especially evident in story games, where, for example, a stick, depending on the conditions, can easily begin to be used both as a spoon for a doll and as a pistol. The child also begins to actively use schematization and detailing, coming up with all sorts of actions and functions, both for objects and their substitutes.

Schematization is expressed in the transfer of already familiar patterns of actions learned by the child to qualitatively new conditions. Detailing is manifested in the desire to supplement each action with new lines and voice intonations. The same plot can be played out differently in new conditions.

Games with cards develop attentiveness and imagination.
As we have already mentioned, the imagination of preschoolers already has a verbal form. Often this leads to the formation of a tendency to lies and fears: moving away from reality as much as possible, the child not only begins to create a new reality, but also to believe in it. However, at the age of 5 years, he already begins to clearly distinguish reality from fiction. Imaginary plots begin to be built on a certain logic and, over time, become as close to reality as possible. Attempts to build cause-and-effect relationships are traced. Realizing that he can easily be caught in a lie, the child begins to avoid it and understand what its harm is.

A great way to develop imagination is a construction set

Thanks to imagination, the child has the opportunity to experience new sensations, gain ground for self-expression and self-realization. It is on this feature that cognitive, creative, and play activities will be built in the future.

Until about 6 years of age, imagination is largely involuntary. The imagination acquires features of arbitrariness in older preschool age.

Cognitive development of older preschoolers in the process of preparing for school

Natural science concepts in preschoolers, as a rule, develop through cognitive and research activities.

When we talk about this activity, we mean the child’s activity directly aimed at understanding the structure of things, the connections between the phenomena of the surrounding world, their ordering and systematization.

Cognitive research activity begins in early childhood, initially representing a simple, seemingly aimless (processual) experimentation with things, during which perception is differentiated, the simplest categorization of objects by color, shape, purpose arises, sensory standards and simple instrumental actions are mastered.

By the senior preschool age, cognitive-research activity is isolated into a special activity of the child with his own - cognitive - motives, conscious of the intention to understand how things work, learn new things about the world, and organize his ideas about any area of life. In older preschool age, the child begins to master normative-sign means (written speech and mathematical numerical signs), which provide an increasing separation from the current situation and a further transition to research in the internal, mental plane.

The cognitive-research activity (or exploratory behavior) of an older preschooler in its natural form manifests itself in the form of so-called children's experimentation with objects and in the form of verbal research - questions asked to an adult (why, why, how?..)

Satisfying his curiosity in the process of active cognitive and research activity, the child, on the one hand, expands his ideas about the world, on the other, masters the fundamental cultural forms of ordering experience: cause-and-effect, generic, spatial and temporal relationships, allowing him to link individual ideas into a holistic one. picture of the world.

In kindergarten, there are traditionally classes to familiarize yourself with the environment. As a rule, they are structured like a school lesson: the teacher presents systematic knowledge about a particular area of activity and asks questions aimed at consolidating this knowledge.

The formation of a child as an independent and proactive subject of activity, in this case – a subject of cognition, is facilitated by the organization of classes not in the form of a “lesson”, but in the form of partnership between an adult and children, unfolding as a study of things and phenomena of the surrounding world, accessible and attractive to children, where the latter have the opportunity to demonstrate their own research activity.

The following can be identified as the main developmental functions of cognitive and research activity at the stage of senior preschool age:

— development of the child’s cognitive initiative (curiosity);

— the child’s mastery of fundamental cultural forms of ordering experience: cause-and-effect, genus-species (classification), spatial and temporal relations;

- transfer of the child from systematization of experience at the level of practical action to the level of symbolic action (schematization, symbolization of connections and relationships between objects and phenomena of the surrounding world);

- development of perception, thinking, speech (verbal analysis and reasoning) in the process of active actions to search for connections between things and phenomena;

— expanding children’s horizons by taking them beyond immediate practical experience into a broader spatial and temporal perspective (mastering ideas about the natural and social world, elementary geographical and historical concepts).

When organizing classes in the cognitive cycle, it is necessary to take into account the general tasks of development, to cover a lot of information regarding the structure of the surrounding world, and, in addition, it is necessary to put (figuratively speaking, “package”) the developmental content in such a form that it attracts the child and stimulates his activity.

As with productive activities, this can be done with the help of cultural and semantic contexts, which serve as a kind of intermediaries between pedagogical interests and the interests of children.

Such cultural and semantic contexts for cognitive cycle activities can be, relatively speaking, types of research available to preschoolers, allowing them to take an active research position. Let's consider the following:

1) Experimentation with objects and their properties;

2) Collecting (classification work);

3) Travel on the map;

4) Travel along the “river of time”.

The first two types of research are already present in the free independent activity of an older preschooler. Everyone knows with what excitement a child disassembles mechanical devices to see how they work, or manipulates various objects in order to cause some effect. Also, a child may be interested in collecting simple collections, sorting the items included in it (stones, stamps, inserts, etc.).

Each of the designated cultural and semantic contexts, working as a whole for the cognitive development of the child, creates the most favorable conditions for the implementation of one or another developmental task, mainly these are:

— experiments (experimentation) – mastering cause-and-effect relationships and relationships (ideas about connections and dependencies in inanimate and living nature, etc.);

- collecting (classification) - mastering genus-species (hierarchical) relations (ideas about the space of the world, parts of the world and native country);

- a journey along the “river of time” - mastering temporal relations (ideas about historical time - from the past to the present, using examples of material civilization: the history of housing, transport, etc.).

Certain topics “fit” into each cultural and semantic context, which, precisely through this context, can be most fully revealed to children in an accessible and exciting form.

Literature. 1. Dybina O.V., Rakhmanova N.V., Shchetinina V.V. the unknown is nearby: entertaining experiments and experimentation for preschoolers / O.V. Dybina (responsible editor). –M.: Sphere shopping center, 2001. – 192 p. (Series “Together with children.”)

2. Dybina O.V. The child and the world around him. Program and methodological recommendations. – M.: Mosaic – Synthesis, 2005. – 88 p.

3. Ivanova A.I. Natural science observations and experiments in kindergarten. – M.: TC Sfera, 2004. – 224 p. – (Development Program).

4. Ivanova A.I. Methodology for organizing environmental observations and experiments in kindergarten: A manual for preschool workers. – M.: TC Sfera, 2003. – 56 p.

5. Korotkova N.A. Educational process in groups of children of senior preschool age. – M.: LINKA – PRESS, 2007. – 208 p.

The formation of thinking in preschool age

Children are inquisitive. Studying the world around them, they note its distinctive features and ask questions related to it. By observing cause-and-effect relationships, they begin to understand over time why certain events occur.

The main types of thinking that function in the period of preschool childhood are visual-effective, verbal-logical and figurative.

Test for attentiveness and level of thinking

Visual-effective thinking is used to solve problems that are performed using objects or tools. A clearly defined practical result is achieved, most often by trial and error. However, as the problem becomes more complex, solving it this way becomes impossible.

It is then that the child begins to develop imaginative thinking. It is necessary in cases where the situation goes somewhat beyond the child’s personal experience. However, conclusions are based on properties visible to the eye, and often do not obey not only logic, but even general grounds. And yet, it is on the basis of imaginative thinking that attempts at qualification and generalization are built; the child learns to perform simple operations. imaginative thinking also largely serves as the basis for intuition and experience. Then the child learns to use diagrams and learns the relationships between sizes, shapes and colors. He develops the rudiments of logical thinking, allowing him not only to solve problems, but also to explain how this happens.

But before this happens, the child will need to acquire the skill of working with both real available objects and their substitutes, or symbols, drawings, or just names. The child develops a conceptual apparatus that allows him to solve emerging problems without the use of objects and images that replace them.

Exercises for mastering concepts
Mastering concepts occurs in the process of targeted learning. At the initial stages, work is done with a large number of visual aids. For example, when talking about the life of animals and birds, it is necessary to have pictures with you that illustrate different aspects of their life. And when learning basic arithmetic operations, it is best to perform them with chips or cards. Then the need to use them will disappear, and the child will perform all actions independently in his mind.

A good indicator of a child’s level of logical thinking is his ability to find and explain mistakes or absurdities, as well as his reactions to jokes.

Playing with sand and small objects greatly helps develop thinking

These features also indicate the child’s intellectual readiness for school. An important role is also played by the child’s attempts to carry out his own cognitive activity, connecting and separating objects, observing the behavior of people or animals, and mixing substances.

METHODS OF DIAGNOSTICS OF ATTENTION

The following set of techniques is intended for studying the attention of children, assessing such qualities of attention as productivity, stability, switchability and volume. Each of these characteristics can be considered separately and at the same time as a partial assessment of attention as a whole. To diagnose the listed characteristics of attention, various methodological techniques are proposed. At the end of the examination of the child using all four methods presented here related to attention, it is possible to derive a general, integral assessment of the level of development of the preschooler’s attention. All individual assessments of attention, as in the previous case, are entered into the Individual Card of the child’s psychological development.

Method 5. “Find and cross out”

The task contained in this technique is intended to determine the productivity and stability of attention. The child is shown rice. 5. It shows images of simple figures in random order: a mushroom, a house, a bucket, a ball, a flower, a flag. Before starting the study, the child receives the following instructions:

Rice. 5 Matrix with figures for the task “Find and cross out” for children from three to four years old.

Rice. 6 Matrix with figures for the task “Find and cross out” for children aged four to five years.

“Now you and I will play this game: I will show you a picture in which many different objects that are familiar to you are drawn. When I say the word “begin,” along the lines of this drawing you will begin to look for and cross out the objects that I name. It is necessary to search and cross out the named objects until I say the word “stop”. At this time, you must stop and show me the image of the object that you saw last. After that, I will mark on your drawing the place where you stopped and again say the word “start.” After that you will continue to do the same thing, i.e. look for and cross out given objects from the picture. This will happen several times until I say the word “end.” This completes the task."

In this technique, the child works for 2.5 minutes, during which he is told the words “stop” and “start” five times in a row (every 30 seconds).

In this technique, the experimenter gives the child the task of looking for and crossing out any two different objects in different ways, for example, crossing out an asterisk with a vertical line, and a house with a horizontal line. The experimenter himself marks in the child’s drawing those places where the corresponding commands are given.

Processing and evaluation of results

When processing and evaluating the results, the number of objects in the picture viewed by the child within 2.5 minutes is determined, i.e. for the entire duration of the task, as well as separately for each 30-second interval. The data obtained is entered into a formula that determines the general indicator of the child’s level of development of two properties of attention simultaneously: productivity and stability:

where S is an indicator of productivity and stability of attention of the examined child;

N is the number of images of objects in Fig. 5 (6) viewed by the child during work;

t – operating time;

n – number of errors made during work. Errors are considered to be missing necessary images or crossing out unnecessary images.

As a result of the quantitative processing of psychodiagnostic data, six indicators are determined using the above formula, one for the entire time of working on the technique (2.5 minutes), and the rest for each 30-second interval. Accordingly, the t variable in the method will take values of 150 and 30.

Based on all indicators S obtained during the task, a graph of the following type is constructed (Fig. 8), based on the analysis of which one can judge the dynamics of changes over time in the productivity and stability of the child’s attention. When constructing a graph, productivity and sustainability indicators are converted (each separately) into points on a ten-point system as follows:

10 points – the child’s S score is higher than 1.25 points

8-9 points – the S indicator is in the range from 1.00 to 1.25 points 10 points – the child’s S indicator is higher than 1.25 points

6-7 points – the S indicator is in the range from 0.75 to 1.00 points

4-5 points – the S indicator ranges from 0.50 to 0.75 points

2-3 points – the S indicator ranges from 0.24 to 0.50 points

0-1 point – S indicator is in the range from 0.00 to 0.2 points

Sustainability of attention, in turn, is scored as follows:

10 points – all points of the graph in Figure 8 do not extend beyond one zone, and the graph itself in its shape resembles curve 1

8-9 points – all points of the graph are located in two zones like curve 2

Rice. 7 Variants of graphs showing the dynamics of productivity and stability of attention using the “Find and Cross Out” method

The graph shows various productivity zones and typical curves that can be obtained as a result of psychodiagnostics of a child’s attention using this method. These curves are interpreted as follows

1 Curve shown using a line like –.–.–. This is a chart of very highly productive and sustained attention.

2 Curve represented by a line like This is a graph of low-productive but sustained attention

3 A curve represented by a line of the type – – – – –. Represents a graph of average productive and average sustained attention

4 The curve depicted using the line _____ Is a graph of moderately unproductive but unstable attention

5 Curve represented by the line – – – – –. Represents a graph of moderately productive and extremely unstable attention

6-7 points – all points of the graph are located in three zones, and the curve itself is similar to graph 3

4-5 points – all points of the graph are located in four different zones, and its curve is somewhat reminiscent of graph 4

3 points – all points of the graph are located in five zones, and its curve is similar to graph 5

Conclusions about the level of development

10 points – productivity of attention is very high, stability of attention is very high

8-9 points – high productivity of attention, high stability of attention

4-7 points – productivity of attention is average, stability of attention is average

2-3 points – productivity of attention is low, stability of attention is low

0-1 point – productivity of attention is very low, stability of attention is very low

“Put icons” technique

The test task in this technique is intended to assess the switching and distribution of the child’s attention. Before starting the task, the child is shown a picture. 8 and explain how to work with it. This work consists of putting in each of the squares, triangles, circles and diamonds the sign that is given at the top of the sample, i.e., respectively, a tick, a line, a plus or a dot.

The child works continuously, performing this task for two minutes, and the overall indicator of switching and distribution of his attention is determined by the formula:

where S is an indicator of switching and distribution of attention;

N – the number of geometric shapes viewed and marked with appropriate signs within two minutes;

n – the number of errors made during the task. Errors are considered to be incorrectly placed or missing signs, i.e. geometric shapes not marked with appropriate signs.

Evaluation of results

10 points – S score is more than 1.00

8-9 points – the S indicator ranges from 0.75 to 1.00

6-7 points – the S indicator ranges from 0.50 to 0.75

4-5 points – the S indicator is in the range from 0.25 to 0.50

0-3 points – the S indicator ranges from 0.00 to 0.25

Conclusions about the level of development

10 points – very high.

8-9 points – high.

6-7 points – average.

4-5 points – low.

0-3 points – very low.

Rice. 8 Sheet for the “Put icons” method

“Remember and dot the dots” technique

Using this technique, the child’s attention span is assessed. For this purpose, the stimulus material shown in Fig. is used. 9 The sheet with dots is pre-cut into 8 small squares, which are then folded into a stack so that at the top there is a square with two dots, and at the bottom - a square with nine dots (all the rest go from top to bottom in order with a successively increasing number of dots on them) .

Before the experiment begins, the child receives the following instructions:

“Now we’ll play a game of attention with you. I will show you cards one by one with dots on them, and then you yourself will draw these dots in the empty cells in the places where you saw these dots on the cards.”

Next, the child is shown sequentially, for 1-2 seconds, each of eight cards with dots from top to bottom in a stack in turn, and after each next card he is asked to reproduce the dots he saw in an empty card (Fig. 10) in 15 seconds. This time is given to the child so that he can remember where the dots he saw were located and mark them on a blank card.

Evaluation of results

The child’s attention span is considered to be the maximum number of dots that the child was able to correctly reproduce on any of the cards (the one from the cards on which the largest number of dots was accurately reproduced is selected). The results of the experiment are scored as follows:

10 points – the child correctly reproduced 6 or more dots on the card within the allotted time

8-9 points – the child accurately reproduced 4 to 5 dots on the card

6-7 points – the child correctly recalled from memory 3 to 4 points

4-5 points – the child correctly reproduced from 2 to 3 points

0-3 points – the child was able to correctly reproduce no more than one point on one card

Speech features of preschool age

The preschool period is marked by the most intensive development of various aspects of speech. The vocabulary expands, attempts are made to communicate both with the child’s immediate environment and with new people still unfamiliar to him. In general, during this period it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

Speech development games

Enrichment of active vocabulary . During preschool childhood, vocabulary increases in volume almost three times. The use of various parts of speech begins, generic concepts are acquired and enriched. Thanks to this, the world around the child becomes more systematized: he already understands that in front of him is not just a “tree”, but an apple tree, willow, or birch. That mom brought from the store not just a toy, but a doll or a ball.
Mastering the correct grammatical structure of speech . The child learns to decline nouns by case, to agree words in gender, number and case. At the age of 4 years, a child already begins to speak with a certain intonation, which gives the speech certain emotional shades. Children begin to notice the similarities and differences between words; create new ones based on existing ones, which often looks ridiculous. The child begins to notice sounds that are pronounced incorrectly and makes his first attempts to correct his mistakes.
Understanding the phonemic composition of a word . Thanks to this, the child masters the verbal composition of speech and begins to understand what sounds a particular word consists of. However, it is still difficult for him to identify the first and last word in a sentence, as well as the first and last sound in a word.
Awareness of the function of speech and its role in human life . At preschool age, the child begins to regard speech as a means of communication. It begins to have an explanatory character, becomes richer and wider. Gradually, the child begins to understand another function of speech, which serves for thinking. there is a transition from egocentric speech to internal speech; its content becomes aimed at planning activities in the future.

Tips for parents on the development of a child’s speech
It is important to note that it is the child’s perception of adults’ speech and the development of his own that plays a decisive role in the development of many other cognitive processes of a preschooler.

And if we say that the development of cognitive processes in both primary and senior preschool age is largely determined by speech, this will not be an exaggeration. It is through clarification, explanation, correction that an adult has the opportunity to direct their development. And also receive “feedback” from the child, assessing how effectively the training is going.

The more you work with children, the faster they develop

The general characteristics of the development of cognitive processes in preschool age are as follows:

The preschooler's perception of objects in the surrounding world becomes more developed; the child no longer just takes a quick glance at them, but tries to carefully examine them, peering into the details.
Observing objects and phenomena, the child tries to establish cause-and-effect relationships and learn their properties.
Thanks to an increase in memory capacity, a preschooler is already able to remember the plots of fairy tales and learn short poems by heart.
Speech can be used not only to communicate with others, but also to control one’s behavior.
The child begins to listen to the instructions of adults and follow the instructions given by them.
Imagination becomes more developed; the child begins to clearly distinguish between reality and fiction, truth and lies.

Features of the formation of cognitive processes in preschool children

The development of cognitive processes in preschool age occurs in stages. The formation of types, functions, operations of each process of cognition first overcomes the stage of involuntariness.

Younger preschoolers learn about the world involuntarily. They pay attention, perceive and remember only what interests and attracts them.

Since a 3-4 year old child is busy with objective activities, his thinking is also directed only at objects that arouse curiosity.

The main task in the development of cognitive processes is to form the property of arbitrariness. The child must learn to control the functions of cognition and comprehend not only what attracts with its brightness or sonority. The world around us is filled with a variety of objects, phenomena, properties, events, relationships - we have to comprehend them all.

It is possible to get used to and develop in this world only under the condition of purposeful cognition using volitional efforts. This is the arbitrary nature of cognitive processes.

By the time he enters school, along with involuntary perception and attention, it is important for a preschooler to be able to voluntarily use cognitive functions. Elements of voluntariness are laid down on the basis of speech development and such properties as cognitive interest and curiosity.

Features of educational and cognitive activities

schoolchildren with learning difficulties

Author: Alieva Marina Vasilievna,

educational psychologist of TOPP "Valeotsentr"

Educational activity is the leading activity of a primary school student; it determines the level of his mental development, as well as the formation of the personality as a whole. Issues of forming educational activities become even more relevant when it comes to children experiencing certain difficulties. These students are distinguished by a number of characteristics that negatively affect the development of educational activities. A significant place is occupied by such features as instability of attention, decreased performance, impulsiveness, insufficient focus of activity, and weakness of its speech regulation.

Let us dwell on those general features of mental activity that largely determine the formation and course of cognitive processes.

It has been established that the reduced performance and instability of attention characteristic of these children have different forms of individual manifestation:

- in some children, the maximum concentration of attention and the highest performance are detected at the beginning of the task, and as the work continues, these factors steadily decrease;

- for other schoolchildren, concentration occurs only after they begin the activity;

- Still others experience periodic fluctuations in attention and uneven performance throughout the entire duration of the task.

Many of these children have difficulties with perception. This is evidenced, first of all, by the insufficiency, limitation, and fragmentation of the child’s knowledge about the world around him. This is due to the fact that his perception is incomplete and does not provide sufficient information;

- Polish psychologist Halina Spionek believes that a delay in the development of visual perception is one of the reasons for learning difficulties. Foreign psychologists point to difficulties in constructing a holistic image and identifying a figure (object) from the background as important features of the perception of children with developmental delays. A holistic image from individual elements is formed slowly. For example, if a normally developing child is shown three randomly placed dots on a screen, he will immediately and involuntarily perceive them as the vertices of an imaginary triangle. When mental development is delayed, the formation of such a single image requires more time. These shortcomings of perception usually lead to the fact that the child does not notice everything in the world around him, “does not see” much when the teacher demonstrates visual aids and pictures;

- a serious lack of perception - a significant slowness in the process of processing information received through the senses. In conditions of short-term perception of certain objects or phenomena, many details remain “uncaptured”, as if invisible;

- the speed of perception in children with mental retardation becomes noticeably lower than what is considered normal for a given age, in fact, with any deviation from optimal conditions. This effect is caused by poor lighting, the location of an object at an unusual angle of view, the presence of other similar objects nearby (in visual perception); frequent change of signals (objects), combination or simultaneous appearance of several signals (especially characteristic of auditory perception);

- special mention should be made of shortcomings in spatial perception, for example, the direction or location of individual elements in a complex image. Spatial perception is formed in the process of complex interaction of vision, motor analyzer and touch. This interaction develops late in children with mental retardation and remains ineffective for a long time. Disadvantages of this type of perception make it difficult to learn to read and write, where it is very important to distinguish the arrangement of elements.

All children have memory deficiencies, and they relate to all types of memorization: involuntary and voluntary, short-term and long-term. First of all, the memory capacity is limited and the strength of memorization is reduced. This extends to memorizing both visual and (especially) verbal material, which cannot but affect academic performance.

The development of involuntary memory does not stop at primary school age. It continues to improve in the next stages of ontogenesis. As the child grows up, voluntary memory increasingly comes to the fore, realized as a special form of activity. Without a sufficient level of development of voluntary memory, full-fledged learning is impossible, since the educational process, especially in high school, relies primarily on this form of memory.

It is known that at primary school age, visual material is absorbed better than verbal material.

It turned out that the form of presentation of the material is especially important for lagging children. The predominance of visual memory over verbal memory in such children is much higher than in their peers with normal development. However, it is not advisable to place the main emphasis on this type of memory, since otherwise the development of verbal memory, which in the future should play a central role, will be inhibited. It is necessary, when introducing children to new material, to widely use visual aids, and when consolidating knowledge, gradually move on to verbal methods.

A significant lag and originality are found in the development of mental activity in children:

- this is expressed in the lack of formation of such operations as analysis, synthesis, in the inability to identify essential features and make generalizations, in the low level of development of abstract thinking;

— these schoolchildren are characterized by an inability to organize their mental activity and a lack of self-control skills. Completing the task, as a rule, is also complicated by the fact that children read poorly and cannot understand the meaning of what they read. Serious problems arise when studying mathematics. The content of educational material and the pace of learning, as a rule, turn out to be overwhelming for children. The low level of general development and serious gaps in mathematical preparation for the primary school course do not allow the child to master even the minimum level of the content of the fifth grade course. And this excludes the possibility of normal study of mathematics in subsequent grades.

Research indicates insufficiency (weakness) of speech regulation of actions, which largely explains the disorganization and lack of purposefulness characteristic of the activities of these students. Children experience difficulties in planning upcoming actions, in expressing them verbally, do not always obey the requirements of verbal instructions, do not take it into account as a whole, and are guided when performing a task by any one of the requirements;

— many children find it difficult to realize their actions and put them into verbal form: when completing a task, the child says it out loud, but at the same time says a lot of unnecessary things that are not related to the work. Children's verbal reports are characterized by insufficient accuracy and undifferentiated verbal definitions. It is easier for a child to carry out an action according to instructions than to give a verbal report of what has been done.

The listed features are associated with any academic subject, but depending on its specifics (Russian language, mathematics, manual labor, etc.) they manifest themselves in different ways.

Observations of the educational activities of children in CO classes show that they do not have the need for self-test related to the work performed. In addition, it should be noted the low level of development of self-control skills - both during the activity and after its completion.

- the child’s direct interest in the task quickly fades away, he does not show sufficient activity in his work, does not strive to improve his results, or overcome the difficulties that arise. Children are more or less indifferent to mistakes made, often do not notice them, and do not show an active desire to understand their cause. In the process of activity, individual differences in children’s personal qualities are revealed, due to different variants of the developmental disability. These individual differences must be taken into account during remedial training.

The formation of the planning function of speech, the emergence, along with the situational form, of such forms of speech as monologue, contextual, occurs in play activity, which is leading in preschool age. The latter, as noted above, is characterized by immaturity and inferiority, which retards the development of new, more advanced forms of speech (monologue, contextual).

- the lexical, grammatical and semantic aspects of speech lag significantly behind in terms of development;

- inner speech is significantly delayed, which makes it difficult for children to develop the ability to predict and self-regulate in activities, although with normal development this becomes possible in the fifth year of life;

- the primitivism of the content of children’s speech, the elementary and stereotyped syntactic structures are noted;

— there are errors in the construction of syntactic constructions, omission of a predicate, comparative adverb or pronoun in passive and comparative sentences.

— there is an incorrect use of the category of gender, which leads to errors such as confusion of case endings of nouns according to types of declensions, incorrect changes in adjectives according to gender;

- schoolchildren in grades 2-4 have insufficiently mastered the forms and plurals of nouns. Children find it difficult to form nouns with the meaning of singularity, with the abstract meaning of possessive adjectives. Inferiority of word-formation processes leads to the emergence of semantic agrammatisms. The latter is based on an insufficient understanding of grammatical categories or the formal grammatical meaning of a word, and the child’s attention is focused mainly on the lexical meaning of the word;

- children have difficulty understanding and using complex logical and grammatical structures and some parts of speech;

— when making sentences, SCHOOLCHILDREN MAINLY use everyday vocabulary. The structure of sentences corresponds to familiar patterns and reflects the poverty of semantic connections and primitiveness of content. These features are characteristic of both oral and written speech;

— at the same time, the written speech of children with learning difficulties is characterized by syntactic forms that are more typical for oral communication: sentences with missing members, sentences with incorrect word order, repetitions of words, phrases, non-conjunctive constructions.

Defects in the syntactic design of written speech are also expressed in continuous writing and in the child’s inability to determine the boundaries of a sentence.

The insufficient level of development of all aspects of children's speech, and especially vocabulary, leads to additional difficulties when learning to read. Schoolchildren have great difficulty mastering the reading process and make many mistakes: mixing letters, the distinction of which requires a subtle analysis of spatial elements (w - sch, b - d), rearrangements and omissions of letters, and sometimes entire syllables. In general, children's reading is characterized by monotony, inexpressiveness, and a slow pace.

Poor reading technique, combined with a small stock of ideas about the world around us, a poor vocabulary and limited overall speech development lead to insufficient understanding of the lexical meaning of individual words and texts as a whole. At the initial stage of learning, children have difficulty understanding the meaning of the simplest figurative expressions. It is difficult for schoolchildren to grasp the meaning of commonly used words and phrases denoting objects and phenomena unfamiliar to them. The child is unable to independently use the context in order to comprehend difficult words and phrases that appear in the text. It takes him a long time to master the ability to compose his own sentences with such elements. This situation persists even if the presentation of the task is preceded by analysis and explanation of incomprehensible words and phrases.

Children can retell what they read satisfactorily. But it is difficult for them to formulate the main idea contained in the text they read, as well as to establish temporal and cause-and-effect relationships, characterize the characters and evaluate their actions. Naturally, all this complicates the understanding of the meaning of what is read.

The described difficulties lead to the fact that students cannot independently identify, recognize and assimilate information contained in the text that is new to them. All this, taken together, inhibits the accumulation of various information and knowledge about the surrounding reality, which negatively affects overall development and interferes with overcoming gaps in knowledge and specific deficiencies in cognitive activity.

Children are able to cope with the difficulties described above and master educational material to the extent of the requirements of the general education school curriculum if they study in specially created conditions, and also if the teacher provides them with specific assistance.

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