Diagnostic examination in the senior group of a defectologist teacher

Diagnostic package for children with mental retardation

Package A for children 3 – 5 years old.

Tasks for psychological and pedagogical examination.

Task A.1

Working with matryoshka dolls with two, four and six parts.

Equipment

2,4,6 – composite nesting dolls.

Purpose: To identify the child’s understanding of non-verbal instructions; adequacy of actions, methods of action, state of motor skills, presence and persistence of interest.

Procedure: Display of the matryoshka doll. Offer to do the same. Open and fold. Children 4-5 years old are given verbal instructions.

Analysis of results:

Norm: Understand non-verbal instructions from the age of 3 years. They act by trial. After 4 years - by trying on.

Disassembling and folding a 6-component nesting doll at 5 years old by trying on, and after 6 years based on visual correlation.

They play with pleasure.

At 3-4 years old they give the largest and the smallest. By the age of 4-5, the nesting dolls are lined up in a row, taking into account their size.

Mentally retarded (U.O.)

At 3-4 years old they do not understand gesture instructions and goals and tasks. Chaotic and inappropriate movements. The 2-part matryoshka doll is complex. By the age of 5-6 years, in classes they begin to disassemble and fold 2-4 composite nesting dolls. Underdevelopment of fine motor skills. No expressed interest.

ZPR (Mental development delay).

They show expressed interest and enjoy studying. After the show, 3-4 year old children assemble on their own. Use help. Inappropriate actions are not noted. By the age of 4-5 they can distinguish contrasting values.

Task A.2

Working with a pyramid of 4 rings from 3 years old.

Equipment: Two pyramids of 4 rings of different sizes (one pyramid with rings of different colors).

Goal: To identify the child’s level of perception of size and color.

Establishing the nature of the activity (adequacy and rationality of the method of work, self-control). Presence and persistence of interest. Using help. Learning ability. State of motor skills.

Procedure: A pyramid of the same color is placed in front of the child. Instructions: Build a pyramid or (put on rings). If he does it correctly, I suggest a second pyramid with rings of different colors. Additional instructions: give me a red ring. Give me the blue ring.

Analysis of results:

Norm

By the age of 4-5 they complete this task. Show interest in the task. They understand the meaning of the task and get to work. Up to 3 years of age, it is permissible to collect pyramids without taking into account the size; closing the rod with a cap before stringing the rings is considered inadequate. From 4 years of age, they are collected taking into account the size of the rings. By the age of 5, they use the method of visual correlation of rings.

Mentally retarded (U.O.)

From 3-4 years old they are happy with the bright pyramid, but this is not interest in the task. Understanding the purpose of a task is no different at this age. The more severe the U.O., the more often manipulative and inappropriate actions with rings are observed. After 4 years, they are strung randomly. The second pyramid presents the same difficulties.

Diagnostic examination in the senior group of a defectologist teacher

Diagnostic examination
in a
preschool educational institution for children

with mental retardation (MDD)

Diagnostic examination in a preschool educational institution for children with mental retardation differs in its objectives and methods. In a kindergarten, the task of a comprehensive, comprehensive qualitative analysis of the characteristics of cognitive activity, the emotional-volitional sphere, personal development, as well as the study of the sphere of knowledge, abilities, skills, and ideas about the world around the child, comes to the fore.

Diagnostics acts as a necessary structural component of the correctional pedagogical process and a means of optimizing this process. An in-depth comprehensive examination allows you to build adequate individual and group correctional and educational programs and determine the effectiveness of correctional and developmental training.

During the academic year, specialists conduct examinations in three stages. First stage

(September). The purpose of the examination at the initial stage is to identify the characteristics of the mental development of each student, to determine the initial level of training, i.e., mastery of knowledge, skills, and abilities within the scope of the educational program. The results are summarized and entered into the “Child Development Card”. Taking them into account, subgroups of children are formed for classes by a defectologist and a teacher, and “level” programs of correctional education are built.

Second phase

(first two weeks of January). The main purpose of the examination at the second stage is to identify the characteristics of the development dynamics of each child in specially organized conditions. An alarming symptom is the lack of positive dynamics. At this stage, the information received earlier is supplemented. A dynamic diagnostic study makes it possible to evaluate the correctness of the chosen paths, methods, and content of correctional work with each child and the group as a whole. Adjustments are made to the program, the goals and objectives of correctional pedagogical work in the next half of the year are determined.

Third stage

(held at the end of the academic year). The goal is to determine the nature of the dynamics, evaluate the effectiveness of the work, and also make a forecast regarding further development and outline the further educational route for each student.

Based on the results of the examination, the child is transferred to the next age group or graduated from school.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT MAP

senior group

(diagnostic examination is carried out by a teacher-defectologist)

Child details

Family information

Conclusion and recommendations of TMMPK

DIAGNOSTICS OF COGNITIVE ACTIVITY

Perception

MEMORY

ATTENTION

THINKING

SPATIO-TEMPORAL REPRESENTATIONS

PSYCHOMOTOR DEVELOPMENT

LATERALIZATION

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RESULTS OF PEDAGOGICAL DIAGNOSTICS

PERCEPTION -
assessed by the sum of points:
14 - 16 high level of perception.

8 - 13 average level of perception.

1 - 7 low level of perception.

MEMORY -
assessed by the sum of points:
7 - 8 high level of memory.

4 - 6 average memory level.

1 - 3 low memory level.

ATTENTION -
assessed by the sum of points:
10 -12 high level of attention.

5 - 9 average level of attention.

1 - 4 low level of attention.

THINKING -
assessed by the sum of points:
4 high level of thinking.

2 - 3 average level of thinking.

1 low level of thinking.

SPATIAL - TEMPORAL REPRESENTATIONS -
assessed by the sum of points:
7 -8 high level of development.

4 - 6 average level of development.

1 - 3 low level of development.

MOTOR SKILLS -
assessed by the sum of points:
7 -8 high level of development.

4 - 6 average level of development.

1 - 3 low level of development.

ADVANCED PLANNING

INDIVIDUAL CORRECTION WORK

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Teacher defectologist _________________________________/Zaostrovnykh N.Yu./

Reasons for delay

Two main groups of reasons have been identified.

Social reasons:

• Lack of proper attention from adults, hypoprotection.
• Lack of communication with peers and adults, long-term isolation from society.
• Insufficient creative and mental activity.
• Overprotection, as a result of which the child does not strive to become independent.
• Raising a child by authoritarian parents who do not take into account the wishes and opinions of the child. The punishment of a child in such a family is often disproportionate to the guilt, as a result of which the child becomes anxious and withdrawn, he develops fears, against which mental development is delayed.

Biological causes of the prenatal period include: severe pregnancy, during which the mother suffered a severe infection, trauma, as well as alcohol intoxication, fetal hypoxia, polyhydramnios, prematurity, difficult childbirth, as well as Rh conflict between the child and mother.

After the birth of a baby, the following reasons can provoke the development of mental retardation:

• Congenital speech defects, hearing and vision impairment.
• Previous somatic diseases.
• Pathologies of the cardiovascular system.
• Organic brain lesions.
• Traumatic brain injuries.

Also, experts do not exclude a hereditary factor. If one of the parents was diagnosed with mental retardation in childhood, there is a high risk that a similar condition may develop in the child, despite the complete absence of other risk factors during pregnancy and after childbirth.

One of the main psychological and pedagogical problems is the diagnosis of children with learning difficulties.

Children with mental retardation who come to school begin to experience learning difficulties. They lack the development of certain mental functions, abilities, and skills; they do not keep up with other students, because they lack the knowledge to master the material taught in secondary schools. Such children will not be able to master general school material without special help.

A child with mental retardation can be distinguished from ordinary children by certain features.

1. Children with such deviations in mental development get tired very quickly, cannot absorb a given amount of work, and their level of performance is reduced.

2. Children with mental retardation have difficulty accepting and processing (analyzing) information that comes from the teacher. For a more complete perception, he needs to rely on visual aids. Difficulties also arise during mental activity, because verbal and logical thinking is undeveloped.

3. Children in this category experience difficulties with generally accepted forms of behavior at school. They often become bullying, fight with peers, and do not accept school rules. Role-playing games are not available to children with mental retardation, but in order to get away from difficult tasks, they can happily play simpler games.

4. Children with mental retardation have difficulty organizing their activities. 5. Studying according to the general education school program is unacceptable for them, because their mental development is at an earlier level. Therefore, the teacher needs to observe such children for correct differentiation, and be very patient so as not to send children with normal development to a special class.

In children with mental retardation, mental underdevelopment is clearly expressed in decreased learning ability. But if such children are provided with special correctional and pedagogical assistance in a timely manner, they will be able to catch up with their normally developing peers.

Scientists agree that diagnostics should be carried out in a psychological and pedagogical aspect. Not all children in this category have a pronounced neurological status, but at the same time there are some signs reminiscent of mild debility. However, neurological symptoms of a residual nature cannot be the main one in the diagnosis of mental retardation, because it may be similar to symptoms in normally developing children with certain diseases. In this case, it is better to carry out diagnostics in psychological and pedagogical terms. When diagnosing mental retardation, you need to pay attention to how the child completes the task independently and how he manages to do it with the help of an adult. Children in this category cope with a task with the assistance of a teacher much faster and more efficiently; this distinguishes them from mentally retarded children, and attention should be paid to this fact when diagnosing.

If the main symptom is a lack of memory, attention, transition and speed of mental processes, then a diagnosis of mental retardation is made (T.V. Egorova).

But some children can be definitively diagnosed only after psychological and pedagogical observation during their studies in the lower grades of secondary school.

Also, one of the diagnostic stages includes a significantly low level of gaming activity (in contrast to peers). They are unable to play role-playing games, they are unable to choose a topic without adult intervention, and in role-playing games they cannot assign roles. Difficulties also arise with compliance with the game plan (scenario).

But if we compare children with mental retardation with mentally retarded children, we will see that children with mental retardation are always adequate in their actions and play with any toy in accordance with its purpose.

How are ZPR classified?

In practical work with children with mental retardation, specialists most often use K.S. Lebedinskaya’s classification, based on an etiopathogenetic approach, based on which they distinguish 4 types of mental retardation:

• mental retardation of the constitutional type is characterized by infantilism, as a result of which the emotional-volitional sphere of a child with mental retardation is similar to that of younger children; it, developing asynchronously with other mental functions, is at an earlier stage of ontogenesis. Characterized by constantly elevated or depressed mood, expressiveness, superficiality, instability of emotions, and impressionability.
• ZPR of the somatogenic type is caused by persistent psychophysical asthenia, which occurs as a result of the influence of long-term chronic somatic diseases. In children with mental retardation of this type, self-regulation and volition are reduced, and secondary infantilization often occurs. There is also immaturity in the emotional sphere (lability, anxiety, capriciousness).
• Mental retardation of psychogenic origin is caused by an unfavorable social development environment, psychotraumatic factors and, accordingly, is associated with the development of neuroses, mental or borderline disorders in the child. With this variant of mental retardation, disturbances in the emotional-volitional sphere (fears, timidity, aggressiveness, impulsiveness, negativism), increased exhaustion, decreased self-regulation and volition come to the fore.
• ZPR of cerebral-organic origin can be found more often than other types; this type of ZPR is the most persistent and heaviest. It suggests the presence of impaired cognitive processes, delayed development of the emotional-volitional sphere and physical immaturity. Most often, due to the fact that residual organic damage to the brain occurred at a very early stage of development, this type of mental retardation is on the verge of mental retardation.

Children with mental retardation: diagnosis

Among the underachieving students there are schoolchildren with pedagogical neglect, mental retardation , and mildly expressed sensory, intellectual, and speech disorders.

Their causes are residual lesions of the central nervous system and minimal brain dysfunction.

Children with mental retardation (MDD) make up approximately 50% of underperforming schoolchildren.

In domestic correctional pedagogy, the concept of “ mental retardation ” is psychological and pedagogical and characterizes a lag in the development of a child’s mental activity.

The term “ delay ” emphasizes the temporary (discrepancy between the level of mental development and the child’s passport age) and at the same time temporary nature of the lag itself, which is overcome with age, and the more successfully the earlier special conditions for the education and upbringing of these children are created.

Mental retardation is one of the most common forms of mental pathology in childhood.

More often it is detected when a child begins studying in the preparatory group of a kindergarten or at school, especially at the age of 7-10 years, since this age period provides great diagnostic opportunities.

In medicine, mental retardation is classified as a group of borderline forms of intellectual disability.

ZPR are characterized by:

1. slow pace of mental development,
2. personal immaturity,
3. mild impairments of cognitive activity.
4. persistent, albeit mild, intellectual disability,
5. a weakly expressed tendency towards compensation and reversible development (possible only under conditions of special training and education).

Groups of children with mental retardation:

1. children with an impaired rate of physical and mental development, who were characterized as children with psychophysical and mental infantilism .

The delay in their development is caused by the slow rate of maturation of the frontal region of the cerebral cortex and its connections with other areas of the cortex and subcortex.

These children are inferior to their peers in physical development, are characterized by infantilism in cognitive activity and the volitional sphere, have difficulty engaging in educational activities, get tired quickly, and are characterized by low performance.

2. students with functional mental disorders (cerebrasthenic conditions) , which are usually the result of brain injuries.

They are characterized by weakness of the basic nervous processes; there are no deep impairments in cognitive activity; during periods of normalization of their condition, they can achieve high results in their studies.

Forms of intellectual impairment in children with delayed development (G.E. Sukhareva):

1) intellectual impairment due to unfavorable environmental and educational conditions or behavioral pathology;

2) intellectual impairments in long-term asthenic conditions caused by somatic diseases;

3) disorders in various forms of infantilism;

4) secondary intellectual disability due to damage to hearing, vision, speech defects, reading, and writing;

5) functional-dynamic intellectual disorders in children in the residual stage and late period of infections and injuries of the central nervous system.

Clinical taxonomy of children with mental retardation (K.S. Lebedinskaya) - four main variants of mental development delays:

1. constitutional,
2. somatogenic,
3. psychogenic,
4. cerebral-organic origin. These variants differ from each other in the structural features and nature of the relationship between the two main components of this developmental anomaly: the type of infantilism and the nature of neurodynamic disorders.

Groups of borderline forms of intellectual disability (V.V. Kovalev - pathogenetic principle):

1) dysontogenetic forms, the deficiency is caused by mechanisms of delayed or distorted development of the child;

2) encephalopathic forms, based on organic damage to brain mechanisms in the early stages of ontogenesis;

3) intellectual disability - associated with defects in analyzers and sensory organs (hearing, vision) and due to the action of the mechanism of sensory deprivation;

4) associated with defects in education and lack of information from early childhood (“sociocultural mental retardation”).

Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of children with mental retardation:

1. significant heterogeneity of impaired and intact links of mental activity,
2. pronounced unevenness in the formation of different aspects of mental activity.
3. low level of development of perception - the need for a longer period of time to receive and process sensory information;
4. they do not always recognize and often mix letters of similar design and their individual elements; combinations of letters are often mistakenly perceived, etc.
5. at the beginning of the stage of systematic learning in children with mental retardation, inferiority of subtle forms of visual and auditory perception, insufficient planning and execution of complex motor programs are revealed.
6. spatial representations are also insufficiently formed: orientation in the directions of space; Difficulties often arise in spatial analysis and synthesis of the situation.
7. instability, absent-mindedness, low concentration, difficulty switching.
8. deviations in the development of memory - decreased productivity of memorization and its instability; greater preservation of involuntary memory; a noticeable predominance of visual memory over verbal; low level of self-control in the process of learning and reproduction.
9. development of the cognitive activity of these children, starting with early forms of thinking - visual-effective and visual-figurative.
10. Analytical-synthetic activity in all types of thinking is insufficiently formed - when analyzing an object or phenomenon, children name only superficial, insignificant qualities with insufficient completeness and accuracy.
11. decrease in cognitive activity - some children practically do not ask questions about objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality (slow, passive, with slow speech). Other children ask questions related mainly to the external properties of surrounding objects. (somewhat disinhibited, verbose).
12. superficiality and incompleteness of knowledge about objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, which children acquire mainly from sources of mass information, books, and through communication with adults.
13. general disorganization, impulsiveness, lack of focus, weakness of speech regulation; low activity in all types of activities, especially spontaneous ones
14. The necessary step-by-step control over the activity being performed is also violated; they often do not notice the discrepancy between their work and the proposed model, and do not always find the mistakes made, even after asking an adult to check the work done.
15. weakening of regulation at all levels,
16. the need to communicate with both peers and adults is reduced.
17. underdevelopment in children of this category of social maturity.
18. lack of formation of gaming activity.
19. decreased level of learning compared to normally developing children. Unlike the mentally retarded, they have a relatively high learning ability, therefore, after assistance provided to them, in most cases they can master the method of solving the proposed problem and use it in the future.
20. Features of the speech of children with mental retardation - a lag in the development of speech in children with mental retardation, low speech activity, insufficiency of the dynamic organization of speech. Limited vocabulary, inferior concepts, low level of practical generalizations, difficulties in understanding and using a number of lexemes, insufficient verbal regulation of actions.

Groups of older preschoolers with mental retardation (I.A. Korobeinikov):

1. children who show interest in the work being done; at the same time, when faced with difficulties, the focus of activity is disrupted, activity decreases, and actions become indecisive.
2. children with less expressed interest in work and low activity. When difficulties arise in solving a problem, these features become more pronounced and significant external stimulation is required to continue working.

Diagnosis of mental retardation should be carried out primarily in psychological and pedagogical terms.

Differential diagnosis is most successful if it is based on the results of psychological techniques, in particular neuropsychological tests.

It is better to construct the survey in the form of a training experiment.

In the process of psychological and pedagogical study, it is recommended to use tasks in a visual and effective manner, which significantly improves the quality of their implementation.

For a more objective assessment of the level of development of thinking, it is necessary to compare the results of the child’s work in tasks with verbal-logical and visual-effective material.

Unlike the mentally retarded, they better use help and methods of applying the shown method of action when performing similar tasks. This fact is very important both for diagnosing mental retardation and for a positive prognosis in the education of such children.

Corrective analysis levels:

• neuropsychological (implies knowledge about the functional organization of the brain and the basic principles of localization of functions, which allows one to choose adequate means and methods of influence in correctional work).
• the general psychological level of analysis of the content of the norm of mental development involves the use of data on the basic patterns and mechanisms of functioning of a person’s inner world;
• The age-psychological level of analysis of the content of the norm of psychological development allows us to specify general psychological data and individualize their study.

Classification and symptoms of delay

There are different options for classifying mental retardation, but experts often resort to the Lebedinskaya classification.

What types of ZPR exist:

1. Psychogenic. The main reason is raising a child in negative conditions.
2. Somatogenic. The reason is insufficient development of the central nervous system, which was a consequence of diseases suffered at an early age. If a child is in the hospital for a long period of time, there is no communication with peers, which also causes communication problems. Such children are inhibited and fearful, have insufficient memory capacity, and are hyperactive.
3. Constitutional. The processes of development of the central nervous system slow down, as a result of which gaming activity significantly prevails over cognitive activity. The child’s behavior no longer corresponds to his age, inattention develops, and memory deteriorates.
4. Cerebral-organic. The type of ZPR that occurs most often. The main reason is primary organic brain damage. Children with this type of mental retardation are often inhibited, they lack lively emotions, and their imagination is poor.

Prevention of mental retardation

Prevention of mental retardation includes, first of all, a responsible approach to pregnancy planning. During the period of bearing a child, the mother should try in every possible way to avoid any negative effects on the fetus.

At an early age, the benefits of preventing infectious and various somatic diseases are undeniable. It is important to provide favorable living conditions for the child. If there is the slightest suspicion that a child is developing psychomotor processes, it is necessary to conduct an examination by specialists and promptly begin work to eliminate the condition.