Ahead of time researches. The heritage

There are developed Vygotsky’s ideas concerning the complex structure of the abnormal ontogenesis. The concept “abnormal child” is clarified by the author regarding to development, its dynamic peculiarities which are impossible to describe from the point of view of the single abilities falling out. The damage is considered as a primary condition of the secondary symptoms appearance reflecting the tendencies of the child development process –appearing difficulties, compensatory tendencies and the use of the conserved possibilities. These ideas are specified while considering the development features of the different children categories – children with sensory and speech disorders, with oligophrenia.

There is presented the importance of the clinical approach to the study of the abnormal development mechanism. Clinical characteristics of pathological factors is given, which define the biological underlying causes of psychic development abnormalities, the peculiarities of the original difficulties, without understanding of those it’s impossible to develop the individual approach to the treatment and psychological- pedagogical special correctional work. Interaction of various pathogenesis factors including aetiology, the character of the disease process, localization and the injury time are considered in the context of the child’s nervous system development process. There are presented clinical forms of oligophrenia, differentiated with traumatic and schizophrenic dementia, mental retardation complicated with epileptic process. There are characterized cerebral-asthenic state, variants of temporary psychical development delays, clinical picture of speech development disorders, visual and hearing function damages.

There are defined the subject and targets of special psychology, it’s specialization in the search of special education facilities mobilizing the compensatory possibilities of the child. There are defined main regularities and typical peculiarities for the each category of abnormal children. The difficulties and children’s disabilities are studied from the point of view of the disorder of normal interaction of a child with the environment and in the inseparable connection with special education process. There is confirmed the leading role in the education and development of the child, the necessity of special correctional work in the zone of his proximal development. There’s shown that compensatory possibilities are realized not in the mechanical working of the single elementary skills but in the development of accessible for the child forms of the complicated psychical activity, broadening the possibilities of communication and interaction with other people.

There is shown that the systemic character of the speech activity requires the study of the conditions of formation of various language components interaction in norm, and it is a great importance for understanding of abnormal development mechanism. There’s traced the dependence of the formation of the articulatory speech aspect on possibilities of the hearing and speech locomotive analyzer, as well as vocabulary and grammar system acquisition on objects perception development and analytical – synthetical processes. There is presented the specifics of disorders of the articulatory and meaning aspect of speech caused by hearing loss in deaf and hearing impaired children; the peculiarities of speech development connected with function disorders of visual perception, mental retardation. There are described speech development issues related to articulatory apparatus disorders and phonemic perception, gnostic function of the hearing analyzer, to the peculiarities of the regulatory processes.

There are presented methods of pedagogical assessment of an abnormal child, necessity of pedagogical assessment, the primary defect influence and detection and interpretation of the complex interaction character of the primary and secondary manifestation, which produce combinations, defining meaningful peculiarities of the each child within different categories of abnormal children. There’s shown the assessment importance of actual achievements and development prospect, which are detected in the zone of proximal development of a child for selection of adequate educational conditions and methods of special correctional impact. There are defined the requirements to the pedagogical organization assessment, providing the differentiation of the age-specific, general for the presented children category and individual features, assessment methods of the pedagogical influence.

There are analyzed the monograph content “The foundations of teaching and upbringing of abnormal children”, released under the editorship of A.I.Dyachkov in 1962 and presented the research results of the previous decades, which had been “the golden age” of the Russian defectology. There are considered clinical, psycho-physiological, psychological, pedagogical works of the researches, who developed the L.S. Vygotsky views concerning the development, education and upbringing of an abnormal child. There’s shown that by the middle of the 60-s of the last century this country had possessed the well-grounded and experimentally checked theory of education and upbringing of children with disabilities and children with special needs. The difficulties of formation of the differentiated special education system weren’t connected with the lack of scientific basis of its development. There’s concluded that effective development of the scientific ideas is important but not the determining condition of the practice development of support of the children with special educational needs. There is indicated that for the realization of the accumulated achievements of the domestic special psychology and pedagogy at the present time as well as during the Soviet period it’s necessary to form social inquiry into development of heritage of cultural- historical defectology, but that is the line of the future.