OVERCOMING DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING READING AND WRITING

CHILDREN with STD (SLIDE 1)

Children with severe speech impairments- this is a special category of children with developmental disabilities who have preserved hearing, are not primarily impaired in intelligence, but have significant speech defects that affect the development of the psyche. (SLIDES 2-5)

These children have a poor vocabulary, some do not speak at all. Despite sufficient opportunities for mental development, such children experience a secondary mental retardation, which sometimes gives rise to the misconception that they are intellectually inferior. This impression is aggravated by the lag in mastering literacy and understanding arithmetic problems. Most children in this category have limited thinking, speech generalizations, and difficulties in reading and writing.

Successful speech formation and mastery of the program teaching this group of children effectively onlyat a special purpose school , where a special system of corrective effects is used. Initially, these schools provided education in the amount of 4 classes of a mass school. Currently, the education of children with SLD is carried out in groups and classes of general education institutions.

On the process of learning writing and reading in children with SLD are affected by violations of the sound-syllable structure of the word. Deficiencies in assimilation manifest themselves not only and not so much in their oral speech, but also in written speech. They are the cause of the difficulties that arise in learning to read and write. Their ability for sound analysis and synthesis is much weaker than that of normal speakers. ( SLIDE 6)

Interesting data is provided by L.F. Spirova, who examined children aged six to seven years with correct speech and with general underdevelopment. According to her , selection vowel sound at the beginning of a word 78% of children with correct speech turned out to be accessible and only 46.2% of children with general speech underdevelopment . With emphasis on the consonant sound in beginning of a word with 53.4% of children with correct speech were correct and only 18% with general speech underdevelopment. It turned out to be especially difficult for children with general speech underdevelopment emphasizing the vowel sound at the end of a word. Only 3.1% of children with general speech underdevelopment coped with this task, while children with correct speech gave 23.5% correct answers. ( SLIDE 7).

Thus, children with SLI experience difficulties not only in distinguishing sounds and their pronunciation, but also in analyzing the sound composition of speech, which causes difficulties in mastering literacy and is reflected in the children’s writing. All literacy process is divided into three periods:

preparatory , whose task is to prepare children for reading and writing during the primer period;

alphabetic - the longest and most responsible;

postliteral , during which reading and writing skills are improved.

the main task preparatory period(pre-letter) development of phonemic hearing and correct pronunciation. In the development of writing skills, as already noted, the formation of motor operations plays an important role. In parallel with the development of speech, preparation for writing occurs. ( SLIDE 8)

This period is important in the formation of phonemic hearing in children. The child must not only hear the word, but also be aware of the sound composition, correlate letters with sounds, combine sounds into syllables, and syllables into words.

An example of lesson construction in the pre-literary period:

Subject. Sound and letter (SLIDE 9)

Isolation of sounds from speech ( onomatopoeia).

Isolating words from sentences, dividing words into syllables.

Isolating vowel sounds from words ( au, wa, hurray, Olya, Ulya, etc..).

Consonant highlighting ( ah, mustache, na, mom).

Showing letters of the picture alphabet.

Highlighting offers.

Children guessing riddles.

Drawing objects whose names begin with highlighted sounds.

Primer period is the period of mastering speech-sound symbols, children’s attention is focused on letters, their combinations with other letters, on their printed and handwritten images. ( SLIDE S 10-11)

Let's consider the work at the stage of sound formation. Mastering each sound occurs in the process of comparing it with other speech sounds. At the first stage of working on sound (staging), correct articulation and correct sound are compared with incorrect ones.

In addition to practicing sounds, a lot of space is given to pronouncing words and sentences.

The ability to hear each individual sound, clearly separate it from the one next to it, and know what sounds a word consists of are the most important prerequisites for successful learning to read and write.

Exercise for training vowel sounds (Slide 12)

Practice the correct sound of each vowel in combination with other vowel sounds:

AI EI OI UI YI

AE EA OE UE YE

JSC EO OA UA YA

AY EY OU OU EY

Repeat each sound combination three times:

AI - AI - AI EI - EI - EI OI - OI - OI

AE – AE – AE EA – EA – EA OE – OE - OE

AO – AO – AO EO – EO – EO OA – OA – OA

AU - AU - AU AU - AU - AU OU - OU - OU

Poems for mastering the concepts of “vowel”, “consonant”: ( SLIDE 13)

I use syllable tables: (samples - SLIDES 14-15)

ALGORITHM FOR READING SYLLABLE AND VOCABULARY TABLES.

Separate the “working field” of 9, 16, 25 or 36 syllables.

Reading syllables (words) line by line.

Reading syllables (words) in columns (with faster reading tempo).

Teacher shows calls.

Teacher calls syllables (words) in different sequences, student shows and calls.

Notes:

If a syllable (word) is read incorrectly by a child, the teacher’s pointer “freezes” on this syllable (word) - this is a signal to the student that he must read the syllable (word) again.

Widely applicable express control. (SLIDE 16)

Express control on literacy learning (Letter O).

Write the letters you are learning in writing:

O o a y O A o y o o Yu yu o O

Autumn. Leaves are falling.

The sun heats up less.

The days have become shorter.

Color the pictures whose names contain the sound [o], divide the word patterns into syllables, put emphasis:

In the process of writing Children with SLI often miss vowels. This is due to the fact that vowels are perceived as shades of consonant sounds. Division into syllables helps highlight vowels. In syllabic analysis, reliance is placed on vowel sounds. Writing disorders are often accompanied by a large number of spelling errors. In this regard, very useful selection exercises and definition stressed syllable in a word. These exercises contribute to a better understanding of one of the basic rules of spelling studied in elementary school - the rules for spelling unstressed vowels. (Slides 17-18)

The unique mental development of children with SLD requires a creative approach, the ability to organize the educational process in such a way as to interest children and arouse a desire to learn to read. The basis of the correctional and speech therapy process for teaching children to read and write is a game. When introducing children to a letter, specific work is carried out in a playful way to consolidate its image and correlate it with the sound.
1. Acquaintance with the printed letter, consideration of various options for its images.
2. Poetic, illustrated description of the letter.
3. Comparison of a printed letter with a picture and identification of a characteristic
features of each letter (letters-wheels - O, S, E; letters - rockets L, A, D; letters - stairs N, E, E; letters-fences - Ш, Ц, И, П).
4. Memorizing a poem about a letter.
5. Using a stencil, trace and color the letter and the picture that begins with this letter.
6. Print the letter in your notebook according to the model.

Help children remember letters didactic games and tasks which they really like: fashion a letter from dough, plasticine, lay it out from sticks or matches, fold a cut letter, “revive the letter”, turning it into a living object. ( SLIDE 19)

Difficult to develop in children with SLI skill of using new words. The following exercises can be suggested:

read the words on the cards;

place the word card under the corresponding image;

make a sentence from these words;

You can give an algorithm:

1) read the words, remember them;

2) write them down from memory;

3) make a sentence with these words. ( SLIDE 20)

In order to enriching and activating the vocabulary The following exercises can be used:

listing as many items as possible;

classification of objects according to their location and location;

subsuming the names of objects under a generic concept (radish, potatoes, vegetables);

designation of the main parts of the object (chair - seat, back, etc.);

a set of words denoting a diminutive-increasing name;

learning words that denote actions performed by animate objects. (SLIDE 20)

Words denoting action are easier to understand if students complete tasks on:

the name of a series of actions characteristic of a given subject (the duck walks, swims, flies);

defining a subject by a series of actions (meows, purrs);

contrasting actions (the horse neighs and the cow- ...);

designation of increasing or decreasing intensity of action (drags, walks, runs, rushes).

At the stage familiarization with the word it is important that work on meaning and sound analysis precede showing the spelling of this word on a card or board. We must not forget about exercises in selecting words with the same root.

For example, the teacher asks students to look at a picture card depicting an object (fox, bear). Students call an object a word and understand its meaning. You can organize the work in another way: the teacher reads one of the riddles, the children guess it and explain the meaning. ( SLIDE 22)

Students read it, determine the difference in pronunciation and spelling. The teacher offers to solve spelling problems: Which letter in a word should be checked and why? How can I check it? Is it possible to check it by selecting a test word? Then the children write the word in a notebook, put emphasis, and highlight the spelling that needs to be remembered. Under the guidance of the teacher, children choose the same root for the word.

They provide a great opportunity to enrich the vocabulary excursions, which expand the range of ideas about the objects of the surrounding reality. They allow children to clearly and clearly differentiate the meanings of words. (stem - trunk, grass- bush, tree), find differences between species and generic concepts (perch- fish), use a more precise combination of words denoting objects and their signs and properties. ( SLIDE 23)

Working on writing a difficult word does not end with one lesson. The teacher can always find an opportunity to offer to write the right word, comprehend it, create phrases, and use it in a sentence. (SLIDE 24)

Vocabulary and spelling exercises include various types of dictations: commented, explanatory, selective, dictation from memory, dictation using riddles, creative dictation, etc.

Dictionary of children with speech and language disorders characterize t not only the insufficient formation of the semantic meaning of words denoting actions, but also availability of small quantities words, expressing the characteristics of an object. Students with DLD do not always understand the meaning of the words they use. Often they do not know how to use them in independent speech. Students, as a rule, learn the basic meaning of a word, but do not realize the semantic commonality between the variety of its meanings. Although different parts of speech are represented unevenly in children's dictionaries: nouns predominate, with few verbs and adjectives, in the process of their learning vocabulary still develops, lexical and grammatical generalizations are formed, but this requires long-term, targeted and systematic work. In children with speech defects, which in most cases are accompanied by pronunciation disorders, great attention should be paid to the state of articulatory motor skills.

I use the games “Correct the mistake”, “Say a word” ( SLIDES 25-28)

It is difficult to work on deformed text. I try to diversify it. (SLIDE 29)

For encouragement to independent description useful to use problematic situations.

Situation 3. You were in the Children's World store and saw a beautiful toy. I really want to tell a friend about it. You call him on the phone. Tell him so that he also “sees” the toy.

Let's look at the features post-letter period. The task of this period is to consolidate and improve reading and writing skills.

Reading- this is the most complex type of speech activity, the perception of printed or handwritten text, understanding the content of what is read. This psychophysiological process is carried out with the participation of speech motor, visual, speech and auditory analyzers. The reading process begins with visual perception, discrimination, recognition of letters, correlating them with a sound image, reading and understanding the meaning of a word, sentence or story.
Children 5-6 years of age without impairments in speech development, they have a certain readiness to learn to read due to a sufficient level of general and speech development. They can quickly remember letters, correlate them with speech sounds, easily learn the combination of sounds, and convey the meaning of a word or sentence they read.
Children with speech pathology do not have such readiness to learn to read. When entering school, they are a potential risk group for fully mastering reading skills. Based on unformed mental processes that provide the normal reading mechanism, children with speech defects often develop persistent reading impairments, expressed in repeated errors - this dyslexia. (SLIDE 31)

The main reasons for the difficulties of children with speech pathology in learning to read is underdevelopment of phonemic processes, polymorphic disturbances in sound pronunciation, poor vocabulary, numerous errors in the use of lexical and grammatical categories, difficulties in coherent speech, in constructing independent statements. As a result, children with speech disorders have difficulty learning sound analysis and word synthesis, and they have problems remembering letters and relating them to speech sounds. Some of them, even with the joint work of a speech therapist, teachers, and parents to teach literacy for a long period of time, cannot master the method of merging vowels and consonants. In the future, they read very slowly, make a large number of mistakes, understand poorly and cannot explain what they read or choose a picture that indicates the meaning of what they read.

Speech underdevelopment of children, lack of formation of linguistic generalizations, and deficiencies in mental activity create certain difficulties in mastering writing, therefore, students with SLI have specific errors in writing. At first, as a rule, they are persistent, but in the process of correctional and developmental training they are corrected.

Dysgraphia - partial disruption of the writing process, manifested in repeated specific errors of a persistent nature.

The child writes as he pronounces it (“sneshok”, “loves”....) (SLIDE 32)

The greatest difficulties in mastering writing skills children with SLI are associated with impairments in phonemic hearing and sound analysis and synthesis; These children have difficulty differentiating acoustically similar phonemes and therefore do not remember letters well, because Each time they associate a letter with a different sound. In other words, there is a violation of the system of transcoding and encoding letters into sounds and vice versa. (SLIDE 33-35)

Images for differentiating letters

One of the effective means of developing interest in an academic subject is the use of didactic games and entertaining material in lessons, which helps create an emotional mood in students, causes a positive attitude towards the work being done, improves overall performance, and makes it possible to repeat the same material in different ways. Didactic games promote the development of thinking, memory, attention, and observation. During the game, children develop the habit of thinking independently, focusing, and taking initiative. A didactic game has two goals: one is educational, which is pursued by an adult, and the other is playful, for which the child acts. It is important that these two goals complement each other and ensure the assimilation of program material.

When using a game according to the rules, the number of game conditions should be limited to two or three, because It is difficult for mentally retarded children to learn a large number of game rules. The teacher should help during the game those children who find it difficult to remember the principle of the game. At the end of the game, the winner should be identified and rewarded. A didactic game can be used at various stages of the lesson, it is especially appropriate at the stages of repetition and consolidation of material.

The topic of the lesson can be given in the form of a riddle, rebus, charade, or crossword puzzle. For example: “By solving a riddle (crossword, etc.), you will find out what we will study in the lesson,” “The topic of our lesson is encrypted here,” or “By solving an entertaining example, you will find out the topic of our lesson.”

Using games in the process of explaining new material. For example: the game “Collect a word” when studying the topic “Connecting vowels O and E.”

The use of didactic games when checking the material covered. For example: the game “Spelling Lotto”, “Synonyms”

(antonyms)”, “Who will write the most words”, “Don’t mix it up”, “The third wheel”, etc.

Games can be with objects - using dummies, natural materials. For example: the game “Vegetables - Fruits”, “Magic Bag”, the color, shape, taste, smell, purpose, size of the object are specified. Exercises in defining an object according to any one quality (attribute), objects are compared, objects are classified.

Board (board-printed) games can be used for group and individual work. For example: the game “Odd Four”, “Paired Pictures”, “Mail”, “Recognize the Silhouette”, “Collect a Picture”, “Where the Artist Went Wrong”, “Dominoes”

"Loto", etc.

Word (verbal) games. For example: independent composing of riddles, the game “Find out by description”, “Name in one word”, “Find a mistake”, various riddles, charades, metagrams, anagrams, rebuses, crosswords, teawords, puzzles, etc.

The main form of studying the speech of children in Type V schools is a speech therapy examination, which serves to identify the state of the student’s speech at a given stage of his development. At the same time, to trace the process of overcoming speech deficiencies, changes occurring under the influence of correctional influence, and studying the child’s personality, it is very important for the teacher to study children in the process of their education. It is systematic study that makes it possible to trace development in dynamics.

In the process of carrying out correctional and developmental work to overcome specific writing errors in students with SLD, speech therapy games and exercises are used aimed at developing skills: finding missing syllables in words, composing words from syllables with missing vowel sounds, composing words from pictures highlighting sounds, come up with words by ear using a given syllable in a certain position, compose a coherent story from various phrases, restore the sequence of sentences in the text.

Thus, the use of special speech therapy exercises leads to a reduction in students’ specific writing errors.

To develop correct pronunciation, classes with a school speech therapist alone are not enough; regular work at home is necessary. Parents have a responsibility to help their child learn to speak correctly!

Chapters II and III provide data on reading impairments in various groups of abnormal children: mentally retarded schoolchildren (Chapter II), children with defects in analytical systems, and with hearing and vision impairments (Chapter III). In the etiology, symptoms and pathogenesis of dyslexia in various categories of children, many common patterns have been identified, which helps to clarify the very essence of this disorder. Instead, the characteristics of dyslexia in various groups of abnormal children are also determined.

Chapter IV provides a method for eliminating dyslexia.

This manual is intended for students of defectology departments, as well as speech therapists and teachers of special schools.

CHAPTER I. READING DISORDERS (DYSLEXIA) IN CHILDREN WITH NORMAL INTELLIGENCE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ACT OF READING. THE NORMAL PROCESS OF READING MASTERY

A critical analysis of the problem of reading disorders should be based primarily on an understanding of the complex psychophysiological structure of the normal reading process and the characteristics of the acquisition of reading skills by children.

What is the normal reading process?

Reading is a complex psychophysiological process. Visual, speech-motor, and speech-auditory analyzers take part in its act. The basis of its process, as B. G. Ananyev writes, is “the most complex mechanisms of interaction between analyzers and temporary connections between two signal systems” (Ananyev B. G. Analysis of difficulties in the process of children mastering reading and writing. - News of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, issue 70, p. 106.) /

Reading, as one of the types of written speech, is a later and more complex formation than oral speech. Written speech is formed on the basis of oral speech and represents a higher stage of speech development. Complex conditioned reflex connections of written speech join the already formed connections of the second signal system (oral speech) and develop it. In the process of writing, new connections are established between the audible word, the spoken word and the visible word. If oral speech is mainly carried out by the activity of the speech-motor and speech-auditory analyzers, then written speech “is not an auditory-motor, but a visual-auditory-motor formation” ( Ananyev B.G. Restoration of functions in agraphia and alexia of traumatic origin. - Scientific notes of Moscow State University. In 3 volumes, 1947, vol. II, p. 139). Written speech is a visual form of the existence of oral speech. In written speech, the sound structure of spoken words is modeled and indicated by certain graphic symbols; the temporal sequence of sounds is translated into a spatial sequence of graphic images, i.e., letters.

CHAPTER I. READING DISORDERS (DYSLEXIA) IN CHILDREN WITH NORMAL INTELLIGENCE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ACT OF READING. THE NORMAL PROCESS OF READING MASTERY

What is the normal reading process?

Reading is a complex psychophysiological process. Visual, speech-motor, and speech-auditory analyzers take part in its act. The basis of its process, as B. G. Ananyev writes, is “the most complex mechanisms of interaction between analyzers and temporary connections between two signal systems” ( Ananyev B. G. Analysis of difficulties in the process of children mastering reading and writing. - News of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, vol. 70, p. 106.)/

Thus, in terms of its psychophysiological mechanisms, reading is a more complex process than oral speech; however, it cannot be considered without connection, without the unity of written and oral speech.

Reading begins with visual perception, discrimination and recognition of letters. On this basis, letters are correlated with the corresponding sounds and the sound-pronunciation image of the word is reproduced and read. And finally, due to the correlation of the sound form of a word with its meaning, understanding of what is being read is achieved. Thus, in the reading process we can conditionally distinguish two sides: technical (correlating the visual image of a written word with its pronunciation) and semantic, which is the main goal of the reading process. Understanding "is carried out on the basis of the sound form of the word with which its meaning is associated" ( Elkonin D.B. Some issues of literacy acquisition. - Questions of psychology, 1956, No. 5, p. 39.). There is a close, inextricable connection between these aspects of the reading process. The process of understanding what is read is determined by the nature of perception. On the other hand, the process of visual perception is influenced by the semantic content of what was previously read. In the process of reading, an adult is aware of only the task, the meaning of what is being read, and those psychophysiological operations that precede this are carried out as if by themselves, unconsciously, automatically. However, these operations, automated in the process of teaching literacy, are complex and multifaceted. The complexity of the technical side of the reading process is clearly manifested when analyzing the reader’s eye movements.

The movement of the eye of an experienced reader occurs in rapid leaps, from one point of fixation (stop) to another. During the reading process, there is a movement not only forward (to the right), but also backward. Returning to what was previously perceived, moving backwards, is called regression. The perception of the words of what is being read, i.e. the process of reading itself, occurs at the moment of fixation, stopping the eye on the line. In the process of direct eye movement, the perception of what is being read does not occur. This is confirmed by the duration of eye fixations. During the reading process, the time of stops is 12 - 20 times longer than the time of eye movement along the line. In addition, when the reading condition changes, when the text becomes more complex, the number and duration of fixations undergo changes, while the time of eye movement from one stop to another remains unchanged. The number of stops on a line varies; it does not depend on the number of words or letters in the line, since eye fixations can occur both between words and in the middle of a word. The number of stops varies depending on a number of conditions: the structure of the word, how familiar it is, whether it is used literally or figuratively, etc.

Regressions, i.e., going back in order to clarify a previously perceived word, are relatively rare among experienced readers. The number and duration of regressions vary depending on the degree of difficulty of the text being read, its importance, and the attitude of the reader. For example, when reading a complex scientific text, the number of regressions will be significantly greater than when reading an accessible literary text.

In the process of reading, an experienced reader simultaneously perceives not a letter, but a word or a group of words. But this does not mean that he ignores the letter composition of the word. The speed of reading and the accuracy of visual perception of a word largely depend on its length, the graphic design of the letters, and the nature of the elements that make up the letter. An experienced reader does not read every letter of a word, but recognizes it entirely. In the process of recognizing a word, the dominant, most characteristic letters, as well as letters whose elements protrude above the line or are located below the line, serve as a guide. In addition, when recognizing a word, the reader relies on the meaning of the previously read part of the text. Thus, the semantic guess facilitates the visual perception of the text. The last phrase of the text being read has a particularly great influence on word recognition. Of course, when reading the initial word of a sentence, text or unfamiliar words, as well as when perceiving an unusual grammatical structure, the role of semantic guesswork is significantly reduced. Reading in this case relies on direct visual perception of words. Thus, the role of semantic guesswork in reading is determined both by the place of the word in a sentence and by the features of the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the text being read.

Along with the positive meaning, the use of a semantic guess often leads to substitutions of words, omissions, and rearrangements of letters in a word, i.e., a subjective introduction of meaning is observed in the reading process. This occurs when the semantic guess is not sufficiently controlled by the visual perception of what is being read.

Reading for an adult is a mature action, a skill. Like any skill, reading in the process of its formation goes through a number of stages, qualitatively unique steps. Each of these stages is closely related to the previous and subsequent ones, gradually moving from one quality to another. “In the previous stage, those elements accumulate that determine the transition to the next, higher stage of development” ( Egorov T. G. Psychology of mastering the skill of reading. M., 1953, p. 31.). The formation of reading skills is carried out in the process of long-term and targeted training.

The famous Soviet psychologist T. G. Egorov identifies the following four stages in the formation of reading skills: 1) mastery of sound-letter notations, 2) syllable-by-syllable reading, 3) the stage of development of synthetic reading techniques, 4) the stage of synthetic reading. Each of them is characterized by originality, qualitative features, a certain psychological structure, its own difficulties, tasks and methods of mastery.

Stage of mastery of sound-letter notations. Mastery of sound-letter notations is carried out throughout the entire pre-letter and alphabetic period. At the same time, the psychological structure of this process in the pre-literary period and at the beginning of the alphabetic period will be different than at its end.

At the stage of mastering sound-letter notations, children analyze the speech flow, sentences, and divide words into syllables and sounds. Having isolated a sound from speech, the child correlates it with a specific graphic image, a letter. Then, in the process of reading, he synthesizes letters into syllables and words, and correlates the read word with the word of oral speech.

In the process of reading, first of all, graphic images are visually perceived, letters are distinguished and recognized, which correlate with their sound meanings. “However, the perception and discrimination of letters is only the external side of the reading process, behind which the most essential and basic actions with the sounds of the language are hidden” ( Elkonin D. B. Some questions of the psychology of literacy acquisition. - "Questions of Psychology, 1956, No. 5, p. 39.). The sound is not the name of the letter, but, on the contrary, the letter is a sign, a symbol, a designation of a speech sound. Therefore, the complex process of mastering sound-letter notations begins with knowledge of the sound side of speech, with the distinction and isolation of speech sounds. And only then are letters offered, which are visual images of sounds. Taking into account this aspect of the process of mastering sound-letter notations, it can be argued that the letter will be correctly and successfully mastered primarily in the following cases:

a) When a child differentiates the sounds of speech, that is, when he has a clear image of the sound and when the sound is not mixed with another, either auditorily or articularly. In the case where there is no clear sound image, correlating the sound with the letter becomes difficult. One and the same letter can correspond not to one, but to two or more mixed sounds, and vice versa, different letters can be called the same sound. In this case, the assimilation of a letter occurs slowly; a specific sound is not assigned to the letter.

b) When a child has an idea of a generalized speech sound, a phoneme. It is known that a sound in a stream of speech and a sound pronounced in isolation are not identical. The sound of speech has certain physical properties, certain features, both significant for a given language and insignificant (I. Baudouin de Courtenay, L. V. Shcherba, etc.). Significant are the semantic distinctive features of sound, which serve to convey the meaning of words, i.e., when they change, the meaning of the word changes (for example, deafness and voicedness: goat and scythe, hardness and softness: was and beat). In addition, in each individual case of pronunciation of a sound, it has individual qualities: pitch, timbre, intonation. Its character is also influenced by neighboring sounds, especially subsequent ones. The same sound in a stream of speech sounds differently depending on its position in the word and the nature of neighboring sounds. For example, the sound s sounds differently in words: garden, mustache, headscarf, sun. But in all these cases, the main features of sound are preserved. The sound remains a voiceless, non-nasal, hard, fricative, anterior-lingual sound. And these signs of sound, which have a distinctive meaning and taken independently of other, insignificant qualities of sound, constitute a phoneme.

When isolating a sound from speech, the child must, in all the diversity of its sound, which changes depending on the position of the sound in the word, grasp some basic constant quality of the sound variants, regardless of its unstable properties. Thus, the child must distract from the secondary properties of sounds and highlight the phoneme. Only under this condition, in the process of learning to read, is the idea of a grapheme, of the correlation of a letter with a phoneme, formed. In the case when the process of mastering a letter begins with the perception of its visual image, its assimilation and correlation with sound is mechanical in nature.

For a child starting to read, a letter is not the simplest graphic element. It is complex in its graphic composition, consisting of several elements located differently in space in relation to each other. There are only a few elements of printed font in the Russian alphabet I i with C(B. G. Ananyev). As a result of this, in the Russian alphabet there are many letters that are similar in style. Two groups of graphically similar letters can be distinguished: a) groups of letters consisting of the same graphic elements, but differently located in space (N - P - I, b - P, etc.) 6); groups of letters that differ from each other in some element (b - S, Z - V, R - V, A - L, M - L).

The psychological literature notes the fact that a child more easily establishes the similarity of different elements than the difference between similar elements (B. G. Ananyev and others). This fact is explained by the fact that the basis for establishing differences is the process of differential inhibition, which develops later in the child and is weaker than the excitatory one.

In order to distinguish the letter being studied from all other letters, including those of similar design, it is necessary, first of all, to carry out an optical analysis of each letter into its constituent elements. Since the difference between many letters lies only in the different spatial arrangement of the same letter elements, the assimilation of the optical image of a letter is possible only with sufficient development of spatial concepts in the child.

The process of assimilation of the optical image of a letter is also carried out on the basis of the ability to remember and reproduce visual images in memory. Recognition of a letter, like any recognition process, occurs by correlating a directly perceived visual image with an idea of it.

Thus, successful and rapid assimilation of letters is possible only with sufficient development of the following functions: a) phonemic perception (differentiation, discrimination of phonemes), b) phonemic analysis (the ability to isolate sounds from speech), c) visual analysis and synthesis (the ability to determine similarities and difference between letters), d) spatial representations, e) visual mnesis (the ability to remember the visual image of a letter).

Having mastered the letter, the child reads syllables and words with it. However, in the process of reading a syllable, the unit of visual perception at this stage is the letter. The child first perceives the first letter of a syllable, correlates it with the sound, then the second letter, then synthesizes them into a single syllable. Thus, during this period, the reader visually perceives not a whole word or syllable at once, but only a separate letter, i.e. visual perception is letter-by-letter. A. Troshin called this stage “sub-syllable reading”. However, modern methods of teaching reading reasonably provide for syllable-by-syllable reproduction of what is being read from the very beginning. Therefore, after visual recognition of the letters of a syllable, the child reads this syllable together and in its entirety. In this regard, the main difficulty of this stage, as well as the entire process of mastering reading, is the difficulty of merging sounds into syllables. When reading a syllable in the process of merging sounds, the child must move from an isolated generalized sound to the sound that the sound acquires in the flow of speech, that is, pronounce the syllable as it sounds in oral speech. “The main difficulty in merging sounds is the need to overcome the typical sound of individual sounds when combining them into syllables and to translate the typical sound into the sounds of living speech” ( Egorov T. G. Essays on the psychology of teaching reading. M., 1963, p. 57.). In order to read a syllable together, it is necessary to imagine that syllable of oral speech that consists of the same sounds, and these sounds follow each other in the same sequence in which the letters in the syllable are given. This means that the child must be able to analyze the sound composition of a syllable, a word of oral speech.

Thus, in order to overcome the difficulties of merging sounds into syllables, it is necessary to develop in children not only the ability to distinguish and isolate sounds, but also clear ideas about the sound composition of a syllable, a word of oral speech, i.e., a sufficient level of phonemic development is necessary.

The pace of reading at this stage is very slow; it is determined, first of all, by the nature of the syllables being read. Simple syllables ( ma, ra) are read faster than syllables with consonant clusters ( hundred, kra).

The process of understanding what is read is characterized by certain features. Thus, the understanding of what is being read is distant in time from the visual perception of the word. Awareness of a word occurs only after the word being read is spoken out loud. But a read word is not always immediately recognized, i.e., correlated with a familiar word in oral speech. Therefore, in order to recognize a read word, a child often repeats it.

Peculiarities are also observed when reading sentences. Thus, each word of a sentence is read in isolation, so understanding the sentence and connecting individual words in it occurs with great difficulty.

In the process of reading words and sentences, almost no semantic guesswork is used. At this stage, guessing takes place only when reading the end of the word and is determined not by what was previously read, but only by its previous part.

Syllable reading level. At this stage, recognizing letters and merging sounds into syllables occurs without difficulty. During the reading process, syllables are quickly correlated with the corresponding sound complexes. The unit of reading is thus the syllable.

The pace of reading at this level is quite slow. Reading speed is still 3.5 times slower than at subsequent levels, in grade II. This can be explained by the fact that the reading method is still analytical; there is no synthetic reading or holistic perception. The child reads a word by its constituent parts, that is, by syllables, then combines the syllables into a word, and only then comprehends what he has read.

At this stage, a semantic guess already takes place, especially when reading the end of a word. A characteristic feature is the desire to repeat the word just read. Long and difficult words are especially repeated when reading. This is explained by the fact that a word read syllable by syllable is artificially divided into parts and does not resemble the corresponding word in oral speech. Therefore, it is not immediately recognized or comprehended. Thus, through repetition, the child tries to recognize the read word and correlate it with a certain word of oral speech known to him. The repetition of words when reading a sentence is often explained by the desire to restore a lost semantic connection.

The process of understanding the text still lags behind the process of visual perception of what is being read; it does not merge with the process of perception, but follows it.

Thus, at this stage there still remains the difficulty of synthesis, combining syllables into a word, especially when reading long and structurally difficult words, difficulty in establishing grammatical connections between words in a sentence.

The stage of development of holistic methods of perception. It is transitional from analytical to synthetic reading techniques. At this stage, simple and familiar words are read holistically, and words that are unfamiliar and difficult in their sound-syllable structure are read syllable by syllable.

At this stage, semantic conjecture plays a significant role. Relying on the meaning of what was previously read and not being able to quickly and accurately control it with the help of visual perception, the child often replaces words and the endings of words, i.e. he exhibits guessing reading. As a result of guessing, there is a sharp discrepancy between what is read and what is printed, and a large number of errors appear. Reading errors lead to frequent regressions, returning to what was previously read for correction, clarification or control. The guess takes place only within the sentence, and not within the general content of the text. More mature at this stage is the synthesis of words in a sentence. The pace of reading at this stage increases.

Synthetic reading level characterized by holistic reading techniques: words, groups of words. The technical side of reading no longer makes it difficult for the reader. The main task is to comprehend what is read. The processes of understanding the content prevail over the processes of perception. At this stage, the reader carries out not only the synthesis of words in a sentence, as at the previous stage, but also the synthesis of phrases in a single context. The semantic guess is determined not only by the content of the sentence read, but also by the meaning and logic of the entire story. Errors when reading are rare, since the guess is controlled by a fairly developed holistic perception. The reading pace is quite fast.

Further improvement of the reading process is carried out in the direction of developing fluency and expressiveness.

At the last stages of developing reading skills, there are still difficulties in synthesizing words in a sentence and synthesizing sentences in a text. Reading comprehension occurs only if the child knows the meaning of each word and understands the connections between them that exist in the sentence. Thus, reading comprehension is possible only with a sufficient level of development of the lexico-grammatical aspect of speech.

The main conditions for successfully mastering the skill of reading are the formation of oral speech, phonetic-phonemic (pronunciation, differentiation of phonemes, phonemic analysis and synthesis) and lexical-grammatical aspects of speech, sufficient development of spatial representations, visual analysis and synthesis, visual mnesis.

A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE TEACHING ABOUT READING DISABILITIES.

The idea of the symptoms, essence and mechanisms of reading disorders developed gradually.

A. Kussmaul was the first to point out these disorders as an independent pathology of speech activity in 1877. Then many other works appeared in which descriptions were given of children with various reading and writing disorders.

During this period, pathology of reading and writing was considered as a single disorder of written speech. In the literature of the late XIX and early XX centuries. It was widely believed that reading impairment was a symptom of general dementia and was observed only in mentally retarded children. Such observations were made by F. Bachmann and B. Engler.

However, at the end of the 19th century. in 1896, W. Morgan described a case of these reading disorders in a fourteen-year-old boy with normal intelligence. This boy studied in a normal school from the age of seven, did well in mathematics, but could only read a few monosyllabic words. Morgan defined this disorder as the inability to write correctly orthographically and to read coherently without errors. Following V. Morgan, many other authors (A. Kussmaul, O. Berkan) began to consider reading impairment as an independent pathology of speech activity, not associated with mental retardation. English ophthalmologists Kerr and Morgan published works specifically devoted to reading and writing disorders in children. They are essentially the founders of the theory of reading disorders.

Somewhat later, in 1900 and 1907, D. Ginshelwood, an ophthalmologist from Glasgow, described several more cases of reading disorders in children with normal intelligence, confirming that these disorders do not always accompany mental retardation. D. Ginshelwood was the first to call difficulties in learning to read the term “Alexia,” denoting both severe and mild degrees of reading disorder.

Thus, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. there were two opposing points of view. According to one, reading impairment is a symptom of mental retardation; supporters of the other believed that reading pathology is an isolated disorder not associated with mental retardation. As the described cases show, disorders occur both in mentally retarded children and those with normal intelligence, and even in mentally gifted children. The latter point of view was more progressive, as it made it possible to study the nature of the mechanisms of reading impairments without making them dependent on general diffuse intelligence deficiency.

Authors who defend the isolated, independent nature of reading disorders have considered the nature of this disorder in different ways. The most common point of view was the one that argued that the basis of reading pathology is the inferiority of visual perception. According to this view, the mechanism of dyslexia is a violation of visual images of words and individual letters. In this regard, reading and writing defects began to be called “congenital word blindness.” Typical representatives of this trend were F. Warburg and P. Ranschburg.

F. Warburg described in detail a gifted boy who suffered from “verbal blindness.”

P. Ranschburg performed a thorough tachistoscopic examination ( Taxistoscope is a device that allows you to present a visual image for a very short time (short-term exposure)) an experimental study of the visual perception of letters in children with reading disabilities. As a result of long-term tachistoscopic studies, P. Ranschburg came to the conclusion that it is difficult to recognize the form of a word with “congenital verbal blindness.” He examined the field of visual perception and the duration of exposure during which a word or letter was recognized. P. Ranschburg came to the conclusion that children with reading disabilities have a narrowed field of perception and a slower process of visual recognition of letters and words. Systematic exercises over many months made it possible to reduce the time for visual recognition of letters and words. But the field of visual perception remained the same. As a result of these studies, P. Ranschburg came to the conclusion that the basis of reading pathology is a limited field of visual perception.

P. Ranschburg was the first to distinguish between severe and mild degrees of reading impairment. Light degrees He designated reading disorders with the term "legasthenia", in contrast to severe cases reading pathologies, which he called alexia. Subsequently, mild degrees of reading impairment were called dyslexia.

Subsequently, the concepts of dyslexia and dysgraphia, alexia and agraphia are differentiated.

Gradually, understanding of the nature of reading disorders changed. Some authors began to consider various forms of reading disorders, differing in their mechanisms and manifestations. Reading disorder was no longer defined as a homogeneous optical disorder. Thus, E. Illing identifies a number of processes that are disrupted in reading pathology: 1) mastery of the optical unity of the letter and the acoustic unity of the sound; 2) correlating sounds with letters; 3) synthesis of letters into a word; 4) the ability to divide words into optical and acoustic elements; 5) determination of stress, melody of a word, changing vowels of a word; 6) reading comprehension.

E. Illing considered the main thing in the picture of alexia to be the difficulty of association and dissociation, the inability to grasp the integrity of words and phrases.

Of great interest for its time was the study of O. Orton, who in 1937 published a work on reading, writing and speech disorders in children. Orton noted that reading disorders in children are quite common. He also pointed out that reading difficulties in children during literacy learning should not be confused with reading disorders in adults with various brain damage. O. Orton emphasized that the basis of reading impairment in children is the inability to form words from letters. He called these difficulties developmental alexia. The term “developmental alexia” or “evolutionary dyslexia” was more consistent with the cases of reading impairment described in the literature in children with delayed development of certain mental functions. O. Orton concluded that developmental alexia in children is caused not only by motor difficulties, but also by sensory disorders. O. Orton observed reading impairments most often in children with motor impairments, in left-handers and in those children in whom the dominant hand is released late, as well as in children with hearing and vision impairments.

Analyzing observations of children with congenital reading disorders, R. A. Tkachev concluded that alexia is based on mnestic disorders, i.e. memory impairments. A child with alexia has difficulty remembering letters and syllables, and cannot associate letters with certain sounds. Reproduction of the beginning of a word is especially impaired. If a child retains the last syllables of a word in memory, then he forgets, distorts, and replaces the first syllables. R. A. Tkachev explains the manifestation of alexia by the weakness of associative connections between visual images of letters and auditory images of corresponding sounds. At the same time, intelligence is intact. This disorder, according to R. A. Tkachev, is caused by the influence of hereditary factors.

The work of S. S. Mnukhin “On congenital alexia and agraphia” states that reading disorders occur in both intellectually competent and mentally retarded children. With varying degrees of mental retardation, alexia is noticeably more common than in normal children.

Based on his own observations and the observations of other authors, S. S. Mnukhin concludes that reading disorders are not an isolated disorder, but are accompanied by a number of other disorders. Thus, all the observed children could not list the months, days of the week, or the alphabet in order, although they knew all these elements and reproduced this series completely in a disorderly manner. Errors were also observed after repeating these series many times. The children could not cope with the task of shading with a certain rhythm (Fig. 1). Memorizing a poem turned out to be a much more difficult process for them than for normal children. Reproduction of the story, which did not require exact transmission in order, occurred without difficulty, i.e., the same as in normal children. The author notes that with alexia the following disturbances in the reading process are observed:

Inability to count the number of letters in a word; form words from the letters of this word, given in disorder, inability to read even a short and well-known word in which letters are missing or rearranged ( p-ro, tsalpa).

As the reading process improved, children completed these tasks more successfully.

As a result of the analysis of observations, S.S. Mnukhin concluded that with congenital alexia, a number of other disorders are observed that are not random, but arise on a common psychopathological basis with reading and writing disorders.

The common psychopathological basis of these disorders, according to S.S. Mnukhin, is a violation of the function of structure formation. Alexia and agraphia are more complex manifestations of this disorder, and more elementary manifestations are disorders of “series speaking”, mechanical reproduction of series (ordinal counting, naming in order the days of the week, months of the year, etc.).

S.S. Mnukhin believed that in the vast majority of cases of alexia and agraphia he described, there was a hereditary burden of varying severity, alcoholism, psychopathy, parental epilepsy, difficult childbirth, and birth trauma. Family cases of this disorder have also been described.

In the 30s of the 20th century, issues of reading impairment began to attract the attention of psychologists, teachers, and speech pathologists. During this period, a certain relationship was emphasized between reading impairments, on the one hand, and defects in oral speech and hearing, on the other hand (F. A. Pay, R. M. Boskis, R. E. Levina).

CURRENT STATE OF THE ISSUE OF READING DISABILITIES.

Terminology, definition and prevalence of reading disorders in children.

In modern literature, the terms mainly used to denote reading disorders are: “Alexia” - to denote a complete lack of reading and “dyslexia, developmental dyslexia, or evolutionary dyslexia” - to denote a partial disorder in the process of mastering reading, in contrast to those cases where the act of reading disintegrates, for example, in aphasia, as a result of certain lesions of the cerebral cortex.

The concept of "dyslexia" is defined differently by different authors. For example, M.E. Khvattsev defines dyslexia as a partial disorder of the reading process, which makes it difficult to master this skill and leads to many errors during reading (omission of letters, syllables, substitutions, rearrangements, omission of prepositions, conjunctions, substitutions of words, omission of lines). The Special Developmental Dyslexia Research Group of the World Federation of Neuroscience, which represents a complex of international studies in neurology, pediatrics, psychology and pedagogy, gives the following definition of dyslexia: specific developmental dyslexia is a disorder that represents difficulty in mastering reading, despite normal learning, normal intelligence and good social skills. -cultural conditions.

However, these definitions do not allow us to distinguish dyslexia from other reading disorders: from reading errors that naturally occur in the first stages of mastering reading, from reading disorders in children who are pedagogically neglected, difficult in behavior, etc. In the definition of dyslexia, it is necessary to indicate the main characteristics of errors reading in dyslexia, which would allow them to be distinguished from other reading disorders.

A feature of dyslexic errors is their typicality, repetitive nature. Reading difficulties manifest themselves in repeated letter substitutions, rearrangements, omissions, etc. A good reader can also have reading errors due to fatigue, distractibility, etc. But these errors will not be typical, characteristic, repeated, but will be random in nature . The second characteristic feature of reading errors in dyslexia is their persistent character. Reading errors are known to occur in normal children. Many children who begin to learn to read make similar mistakes, but they do not observe them for long and disappear quite quickly. In children suffering from dyslexia, these errors persist for a long time, months and even years. Thus, dyslexia is defined not by a few, often random, reading errors, but by their aggregate and persistent nature.

The definition of dyslexia, however, should include not only an indication of the manifestations of reading disorders and the specific nature of these manifestations, but also the difficulties that cause dyslexic disorders. The existence of reading errors in children does not prove the presence of dyslexia. As indicated, reading errors can occur in all children who are beginning to read, in children who are pedagogically neglected, lazy, etc. Reading disorders can be a consequence of behavioral disorders. Failures are observed in these children not only in learning to read and write, but also in other school subjects. In these cases, we are not talking about dyslexia, since reading errors are not typical and persistent, they are not a consequence of the immaturity of the mental functions that carry out the reading process. In dyslexia, reading impairments are often selective and present a clear discrepancy with achievement in other subjects. On the other hand, the mere presence of difficulties in mastering reading without pronounced reading errors does not yet give grounds to talk about this disorder.

Dyslexia in normal children is often a consequence of various difficulties, each of them, existing in isolation, can be compensated, but when difficulties are combined, the possibility of compensation is reduced. For example, normal children may have mild phonemic impairment (phonemic analysis disorder) without obvious dyslexia. These children, despite the immaturity of the phonemic system, compensate for difficulties in learning to read thanks to good intelligence and sufficiently developed spatial concepts. It is advisable to define dyslexia as follows: dyslexia is a partial disorder of the process of mastering reading, manifested in numerous repeated errors of a persistent nature, due to the immaturity of the mental functions involved in the process of mastering reading.

In European countries, up to 10% of children with dyslexia are noted. According to R. Becker, reading impairments are observed in 3% of primary school children in public schools; in speech schools, the number of children with dyslexia reaches 22%.

K. Makita finds a very small incidence of dyslexia among Japanese children, only 0.98%. This is approximately 10 times less than in European countries. Based on an analysis of statistical information on the prevalence of dyslexia, taking into account the nature of writing, the author concludes that the specificity of the language used is a very significant factor in the prevalence, symptoms and structure of the defect in dyslexia. Thus, dyslexia is not only a neuropsychological problem, but also a linguistic one.

Symptoms of dyslexia.

Symptoms and manifestations of dyslexia are defined differently depending on the understanding of the essence of these disorders.

A number of authors (J. Ajuriaguerra, S. Borel-Maisonni, M. E. Khvattsev, etc.), when defining the symptoms of dyslexia, dwell only on the manifestations of reading impairments themselves. Disturbances in oral speech, motor skills and spatial concepts that accompany dyslexia are considered as pathogenetic factors of dyslexic disorders.

Another part of the authors (K. Lonay, M. Kutsem, etc.) believes that reading disorders are not an isolated disorder, but represent only one of the symptoms with which disorders of oral speech, motor skills, and spatial orientation are associated. The basis of all these disorders, as M. Kutsem points out, is a disorder in the area of the cerebral cortex where the synthesis of auditory and visual excitations occurs. K. Lonay suggests that with dyslexia, practical and gnostic processes, auditory and visual, are disrupted, mainly in the speech system.

However, it seems more correct to define the symptoms of dyslexia only as a manifestation of reading impairments directly, not including those disorders (immaturity of spatial orientation, impaired motor skills, etc.), which, although often accompany dyslexia, are, however, factors of a pathogenetic nature, i.e. The mechanism of this disorder.

Dyslexia manifests itself as slow reading. A child with dyslexia's reading is characterized by a wide variety of errors. When mastering letters, difficulties are observed in their mastery, various mixtures of both graphically similar and letters denoting sounds that are acoustically similar. It is noted that dyslexics do not have difficulties in mastering vowel letters. Sometimes with dyslexia, mirror reading is observed, that is, reading from right to left.

Dyslexia can also manifest itself in rearrangements of sounds, in jumping from one line to another, in the inability to carry out sound synthesis when reading words. In the process of reading words, a student who can read well easily combines syllables into words. A child with dyslexia has difficulty synthesizing words, even if he has read all the syllables of the word correctly. He often does not grasp the meaning of the word he is reading.

Global word perception in dyslexia is possible, but it remains undifferentiated and erroneous. In severe cases, dyslexia is characterized by the inability to read groups of two or three letters. Reading will then have a guessing character.

R. E. Levina classifies the following reading errors as typical manifestations of dyslexia: insertion of additional sounds, omission of letters, replacement of one word with another, errors in the pronunciation of letters, repetition, addition, omission of words.

There are also attempts in the literature to systematize the manifestations of reading disorders. For example, R. E. Levina (1940) identifies the following main types of manifestations of dyslexia: insufficient acquisition of letters, insufficient merging of letters into syllables, incorrect reading of words and phrases.

N. Granjon dwells on two types: incorrect recognition of letters and incorrect combination of letters in a word.

Mechanisms of dyslexia.

The problem of dyslexia has been studied for a century, but to this day this problem remains unresolved in many of its aspects. One of these complex issues of dyslexia is its pathogenesis, i.e. the question of the mechanisms of this disorder.

Modern research on reading disorders is multifaceted, in-depth and systematic. They show that the pathogenetic mechanisms of reading disorders are complex and diverse. Trying to identify the mechanisms of dyslexia, scientists conduct neurological, electroencephalographic, audiometric, psychological, and linguistic studies.

Neurological examination does not reveal obvious pathology in children with dyslexia, however, some inaccuracy and insufficient differentiation of movements are often revealed, most often when performing voluntary, consciously controlled movements, while spontaneous involuntary motor skills are normal. What is the nature of this motor disorder? Are we talking in these cases about some subtle, hidden violations of praxis, i.e., voluntary, purposeful movements, or should we talk about underdevelopment of motor skills, the discrepancy between the child’s motor skills and his age, about unpreparedness to perform many subtle manual movements - these are the questions remain open.

The second point of view is more true, since many children, inaccurately performing some movements in the process of educational activities, become surprisingly accurate and lively in games and extracurricular activities. Thus, children with dyslexia often exhibit immaturity and underdevelopment of motor skills, which also affects the formation of spatial orientation.

Electroencephalograms in these children are almost always normal. However, there are more sluggish, lazier waves than the child’s age allows. In other words, the nature of the waves in children with dyslexia corresponds to an earlier age, which indicates a delay in brain maturation, a delay in development. The only cases of pathological traits occur in children with neurological symptoms and speech disorders.

Audiometric studies of hearing show that hearing acuity is normal, most often audiograms without deviations, at the same time, previous otitises are quite often noted. With the help of electronic equipment, it was possible to detect minor disturbances in the speech zones, especially when mixtures of sounds predominated in oral speech. All this, however, does not exclude the possibility of the existence of dyslexia in children with impaired hearing acuity, i.e., in children who are hard of hearing.

There have been a lot of studies on visual functions in children with dyslexia. The first works on dyslexia belonged to ophthalmologists Helmholtz and Javal. At present, there is no doubt that dyslexia is not a consequence of impaired or decreased visual acuity. Children with reduced vision may experience reading errors, but they will not have the specific nature that is observed with dyslexia.

The study of eye movements has shown that in dyslexia, eye fixations are very short and irregular, regressions and returns to movement are very frequent. But these symptoms are a consequence of dyslexia, not its mechanism. If good readers grasp several words during one fixation, stopping their eyes, then a dyslexic reads only part of the word in one fixation, often making regressions to control reading.

Dyslexia and spatial processing disorders.

A large number of studies are devoted to the study of spatial representations, development and state of functional asymmetry, i.e. lateralization, in children with dyslexia.

Children suffering from dyslexia experience difficulties in orientation in all spatial directions, difficulties in determining right and left, up and down. There is inaccuracy in determining the shape and size. The lack of formation of spatial concepts in these children manifests itself not only when mastering reading, but also in drawing, in the difficulties of composing a whole from parts during construction, and in the inability to reproduce a given form.

A study of children with dyslexia revealed a delay in differentiating the right and left parts of the body, late lateralization or impaired lateralization (left-handedness, mixed dominance).

As is known, with normal lateralization (asymmetry in the activity of the right and left parts of the body), the leading and stronger parts are the right parts of the body: right arm, right leg, right eye, right ear. If lateralization is impaired, left-handedness can be observed, when the left hand, left leg, etc. is dominant, or a mixed dominant (for example, the right hand, left leg, left eye are dominant in the same person).

The frequency of dyslexia in left-handers and in children with inaccurate, discoordinated, mixed lateralization has been noted by many authors. Thus, R. Zazzo found 3 times more reading impairments in children with a mixed dominant. He believes that a mixed dominant serves as an obstacle to good motor-sensory coordination and the acquisition of automatisms. M. Roudinesco, J. Trela also note a high frequency of dyslexia in left-handers and a large proportion of left-handedness among dyslexics. B. Hallgren finds that among dyslexics 18% are left-handed, and in the control group - only 9%.

J. Ajuriaguerra and N. Granjon compared the state of lateralization in children with dyslexia and in normal children. They concluded that left-handedness occurs in both normal children and children with dyslexia. Both normal and dyslexic children experience certain changes around the age of 10 years. During this age period, the ratio of the predominance of the right and left changes. Thus, in normal children under 10 years of age, the number of left-handers is 30%, and after 10 years of age it is significantly less, 21%. In children with dyslexia under 10 years of age, the number of left-handers is 46%, and after 10 years of age - 31%.

Thus, the number of left-handers in normal children of an earlier age, 7 - 10 years old, is equal to the number of left-handers in children with dyslexia 11 -13 years old. This supports the view that children with dyslexia have a delay in the development of this function.

Should left-handedness be considered a mechanism of dyslexia? If left-handedness is presented as one of the main factors in the occurrence of dyslexia, then in this case it is impossible to explain the mechanism of dyslexia in right-handed people. In addition, there are often left-handed people who do not have reading impairments. This means that left-handedness in itself cannot cause the occurrence of dyslexia. The relationship between left-handedness and dyslexia is not direct, but complex, indirect. In many cases, especially during relearning and with a mixed dominant, children experience specific difficulties in the formation of spatial representations and designations of right and left. In left-handed children, confusion between the right and left sides is noted. Normally, the distinction between right and left is formed by the age of 6 years. Sufficient development of spatial representations is a necessary prerequisite for the recognition and assimilation of letters by a child. In left-handers without reading impairment, apparently, in the process of evolution, mechanisms are created that compensate for lateral discoordination; in left-handed dyslexics, these compensation systems are organized more slowly, later.

While the number of retrained left-handers is decreasing, the number of children with reading disabilities is not decreasing. This once again proves that left-handedness is not the cause of dyslexia. It is not the fact of left-handedness itself, but the immaturity of spatial representations, which is noted in overtrained left-handed people and with a mixed dominant, that causes reading impairments.

Dyslexia and oral language disorders.

Children with dyslexia have very common problems with oral language. The literature notes the diverse nature of oral speech disorders in dyslexia: 1) disturbances in the tempo and rhythm of speech (stuttering, very fast speech); 2) delay in the appearance of speech; 3) insufficiency of verbal function (inaccurate use of words); 4) violations of the grammatical structure of oral speech; 5) violations of sound pronunciation; 6) disorders of phonemic development.

Disturbances in the tempo and rhythm of speech (stuttering, rapid speech) are often observed among retrained left-handers, and in this case they are a consequence of retrained left-handedness and are not directly related to dyslexia.

In other cases, stuttering may occur in children with late speech development, with a violation of language development during the transition to mastering complex forms of speech (phrasal speech). The speech functional system in such children is very fragile, vulnerable, and weakened. Therefore, with excessive load, with the complication of speech material, overstrain of the speech functional system occurs, which manifests itself in the form of stuttering. At the same time, the underdevelopment of language generalizations (phonemic, lexical, morphological, syntactic) in these children also leads to impaired reading acquisition and dyslexia. Thus, in these cases, the connection between stuttering and dyslexia is indirect, although it is determined by a single pathological factor, a disorder of speech development. It should be noted that the subtle specific mechanisms of stuttering and dyslexia will be different in these cases.

More significant in the occurrence of dyslexia is the late development of speech. With dyslexia, in a large number of cases there is a delay in speech development. In some cases, this is only a slight delay (speech appeared after two years), in others there is a pronounced delay in speech development, when speech appeared after four or more years.

Children suffering from dyslexia have problems with sound pronunciation, poor vocabulary, and inaccurate use of words. They formulate their speech incorrectly, make mistakes in the use of words, avoid complex phrases, limit themselves to short sentences, and inversions are observed.

Noting the frequency of oral speech disorders in dyslexia, many authors believe that both oral speech disorders and reading impairments are the result of the influence of a single etiopathogenetic factor (B. Halgren, S. Borel-Maisonni, R. E. Levina, etc.), which is the cause disorder and its constituent pathological mechanism.

In mild cases, these disorders are detected only at the stage of mastering written speech. In difficult cases, first of all, oral speech is impaired, and later reading and writing disorders are revealed.

Auditory perception in dyslexia is unstable and fleeting. This transience, as noted by S. Borel-Maisonni, entails the difficulty of establishing a stable correspondence between a phoneme and the corresponding grapheme. Children with dyslexia have difficulty distinguishing many sounds.

R. E. Levina believes that the basis for reading and speaking disorders is the immaturity of the phonemic system.

At the initial stages of mastering reading, with underdevelopment of the phonetic-phonemic aspect of speech, children experience inaccuracy and instability of speech ideas and generalizations. This makes it difficult to master the sound analysis of a word (R. E. Levina, G. A. Kashe, N. A. Nikashina, L. F. Spirova). Selective failure to assimilate letters is caused not by weakness in retaining graphic outlines, the assimilation of which turns out to be normal, but by the lack of formation of generalization of sounds. “It is not the letter as a picture bearing the name of the corresponding sound, but the grapheme - the graphic designation of the phoneme - that constitutes the unit of reading and writing" ( Levina R. E. Disadvantages of reading and writing in children. M, 1940, p. 14.)). If a letter does not correlate with a generalized sound (phoneme), then its assimilation will be mechanical in nature.

Sounds that are accurately perceived and correctly pronounced by children are easily correlated with letters. When sounds are poorly distinguishable by ear, are pronounced distortedly, or are replaced in pronunciation by others, the generalized idea of a given sound is fuzzy, and the perception of letters is difficult. Failure to assimilate letters in this case is due to an insufficient level of development of phonemic perception.

Thus, if the formation of phonemic representations is difficult for children, then their representations of the grapheme are slowly formed (B. G. Ananyev, R. E. Levina, A. N. Popova, L. F. Spirova).

The process of merging sounds into syllables is also extremely difficult for these children. To master continuous reading of syllables, a child must associate a letter only with a specific sound, differentiating this sound from others. In addition, he must have an idea of the generalized sound of a given sound. A semantic guess helps the continuous pronunciation of syllables. Merging sounds in a syllable means, first of all, pronouncing them the way they sound in oral speech. If a child does not have clear ideas about the sound-letter composition of a word, the formation of generalized sound-syllable images is difficult.

Reading disorders may also be associated with insufficient lexical and grammatical development of speech. Thus, the replacement of words during reading can be caused not only by their phonetic similarity, incorrect pronunciation or inability to distinguish individual sounds, but also by difficulties in establishing syntactic connections in a sentence. In these cases, children lack the focus on morphological analysis of words, and morphological analysis itself is difficult. So, when reading the phrase Mom washes the frame, normal child, based on existing word connections washes And frame, maybe already when reading a word washes guess what the ending will be in a word frame, since these two words appear in the language only in combination washes the frame and nothing else. In the process of reading, a normal child begins to guess the meaning and grammatical form of subsequent words already when perceiving the previous word. The semantic guess in this case is based on the child’s ideas about the laws of language, on the “sense of language.”

A child with underdevelopment of the lexico-grammatical structure of speech can read the above sentence as “Mom bridge frame”, since his semantic guess is not based on precise linguistic generalizations, on clear ideas about the patterns of word change and their compatibility in a sentence. The semantic guess in this case is either absent or plays a negative role, since it is the cause of a large number of specific errors.

Distortions of read words in children with underdevelopment of the grammatical structure of speech are often determined by the fact that the morphological structure of the word is not sufficiently understood and the correct semantic guess does not arise during the reading process. When reading, such children exhibit agrammatisms caused by difficulties in perceiving subtle grammatical meanings determined by the morphological structure of the word ( flew in- "flew").

Reading disorders caused by underdevelopment of the grammatical structure of speech are called agrammatic dyslexia. With this form of dyslexia, the following errors are observed during the reading process:

1. Changing the case endings of nouns ( I have- "at my place" from under the leaves- "from under the leaves" with comrades- "with comrades").

2. Changing the number of a noun ( astronaut- "astronauts").

3. Incorrect agreement in gender, number and case of noun and adjective (“interesting fairy tale”, “fun for children”).

4. Changing the number of the pronoun ( All- "all").

5. Incorrect use of gender endings of pronouns (“such a city”, “our rocket”).

6. Changing the endings of verbs of the 3rd person past tense (“it was a country”, “the wind rushed by”, “it was day”, did not want- "did not want").

7. Changing the form, tense and aspect of the verb ( flew in- "flew" sees- "saw", announced- "announced").

Agrammatic dyslexia is most often observed in children with general speech underdevelopment of various pathogenesis at the synthetic stage of reading skill development.

A limited vocabulary and insufficiently developed grammatical generalizations cause difficulties in understanding what is read, since understanding what is read is determined by the level of language development of the child, the degree and nature of mastery not only of the meaning of a word, but also of an understanding of the connection between words and sentences.

Dyslexia and bilingualism.

Some authors also consider conflict in bilingualism as a factor determining the occurrence of dyslexia. In some cases of bilingualism, a child speaks one language at home, but at school and on the street communicates in another language. In other cases, parents use different languages when communicating with their child. It is believed that the main factor causing dyslexia in bilingualism is often a psychological conflict between the child’s tendency to use his native language and the need to speak another language (A. Sertou, J. Racine, J. Map, M. Gard, A. Ham). The emergence of dyslexia in family bilingualism is considered in the same way. Is psychological conflict really the pathogenetic mechanism of dyslexia in bilingualism, or are reading impairments based on more complex and multi-valued factors? The second one is more reasonable.

In conditions of bilingualism, the occurrence of dyslexia is influenced by psychological difficulties, difficulties in speech formation, and learning difficulties. In bilingualism, dyslexia is caused not so much by psychological conflict or affective disorders, but by the peculiarities of expressive speech, which develops in conditions of bilingualism and is characterized by various disorders: pronunciation disorders, immaturity of lexico-grammatical design and understanding of speech. When bilingual, mastering linguistic generalizations is difficult. Each language is characterized by its own phonemic system and certain patterns of grammatical structure. In this regard, in the process of mastering oral speech, the linguistic patterns of one language will seem to come into conflict with the still poorly mastered patterns of another language. Thus, it is not a psychological conflict, but disturbances in the formation of oral speech and difficulties in mastering language generalizations in bilingualism that may, first of all, determine the occurrence of dyslexia. Psychological conflict and affective disorders in these children may, at the same time, aggravate the manifestation of reading disorders.

Dyslexia and mental retardation.

In children with mental retardation of various pathogenesis, dyslexia is usually observed when learning to read. Thus, Ingram in his work establishes correlations between reading disorders and developmental delays. The author notes that children with dyslexia have a delay in speech development of at least two years, compared to normal children. In these children, in the process of speech development, there is a late appearance of speech sounds and a slow pace of development of expressive speech. In the process of reading, children have great difficulty correlating speech sounds with written symbols (letters), mixing letters that are graphically similar, and rearranging sounds when reading syllables and words. The author associates specific disorders of written speech with a delay in the development of various mental functions, with speech-auditory and optical-spatial difficulties.

V. A. Kovshikov and Yu. G. Demyanov, studying children with mental retardation, also note in these children a complex of speech disorders, including reading disorders, as well as difficulties in perceiving and reproducing letters, difficulties in forming the phonemic analysis function, synthesis, difficulties in relating sounds to letters. During the reading process, children mistakenly read syllables and words that were complex in structure and confused letters with similar designs.

A variety of reading impairments in these children, according to the authors, are caused not so much by oral speech disorders as by the insufficiency of a number of mental functions: attention, memory, visual gnosis, successive and simultaneous ( Successively - sequentially; simultaneously - at the same time.) processes.

Dyslexia and affective disorders.

With dyslexia, various affective disorders are often noted (M. Rudinesco, M. Trela, J. Aubry, V. Hallgren, etc.). At the same time, in relation to dyslexia, primary and secondary affective disorders are distinguished. In some cases, affective disorders, being primary, are considered as a factor causing dyslexia. In other cases, affective disorders arise in a child due to his failures in learning to read. If a child is viewed as retarded and incapable, he begins to feel inferior. If he is accused of laziness and lack of will, he often becomes aggressive and undisciplined. M. Rudinesko and M. Trela combine all affective reactions in dyslexia into three types: 1) a feeling of inferiority, 2) a feeling of anxiety, fear, uncertainty, 3) negative reactions accompanied by aggressiveness, anger, and harshness.

J. Aubry identifies slightly different types of affective disorders in children with dyslexia:

Active negative reactions arise when the child associates entering school with something unpleasant, due to a change in the situation, environment, conflict with children, or the severity of the teacher. When negative reactions are observed only at school, you can look for the cause in a change in the environment in connection with entering school. When a negative reaction extends to the family, it is necessary to look for its cause in the relationships that the child develops in the family.

Affective immaturity occurs when the child has not been taught to be independent at home. Such children are infantile, do not tolerate changes in environment well, and do not establish contacts with peers at school. They seclude themselves, do not play with other children, remain isolated, sometimes openly express their fear of school life and want to remain small.

Passive protest reactions occur in passive and lethargic children who act only under fear. They must be forced not only to work, but also to dress and eat.

V. Hallgren also finds behavioral disturbances in some children with dyslexia. But the author does not find any connection between behavioral disorders and the occurrence of dyslexia. (He views behavioral disturbances as a factor that accompanies the course of dyslexia.)

The question naturally arises of how affective disorders should be considered: as one of the etiopathogenetic factors or as a consequence of reading disorders.

The identification of affective disorders as etiopathogenetic factors is not sufficiently substantiated, since most often affective disorders are a consequence and not the cause of dyslexia. In cases where reading failure occurs due to negative reactions of the child, pedagogical neglect, behavioral difficulties, reading errors will not be specific, repetitive, persistent, characteristic of dyslexia.

Therefore, there are currently different points of view on the origin of dyslexia. This speaks, first of all, about how complex the problem of the mechanisms of dyslexia is. At the same time, by analyzing all the above data, certain conclusions can be drawn. Disturbances of those higher mental functions that carry out the reading process normally should be considered as etiopathogenetic factors of dyslexia in children. In this regard, dyslexia can be caused by a violation of visual analysis and synthesis, spatial representations, a violation of phonemic functions, and underdevelopment of the lexico-grammatical aspect of speech. Consequently, reading impairments may be caused, firstly, by underdevelopment of sensorimotor functions (agnostic-apractical disorders). Thus, underdevelopment of visual analysis and synthesis, spatial representations causes the child difficulties in mastering visual images of letters, difficulties in recognizing and distinguishing them (optical dyslexia). Secondly, reading disorders can be caused by underdevelopment of higher symbolic functions, underdevelopment of language generalizations: phonemic, lexical, grammatical (phonemic, semantic, agrammatic dyslexia). This group of reading disorders is the most common. Reading impairments in this case are one of the signs of impaired language development.

The origin of dyslexia is associated with the underdevelopment of many functional systems. In determining the form of dyslexia, the underdevelopment of the leading functional system in this case becomes crucial.

Dyslexia and heredity.

Some authors studying reading disorders in children note a hereditary predisposition in dyslexia. Thus, M. Lamy, K. Lonay, M. Sule studied an interesting case of dyslexia in two monozygotic twins 12 and a half years old. In the first year of learning to read, boys showed numerous errors in reading, repeated, typical and persistent. Mastering reading progressed very slowly, with great difficulties. During the writing process, various errors were also observed: substitutions of graphically similar letters, rearrangements of letters and syllables, and spelling errors. In all other subjects, especially mathematics, knowledge was satisfactory. There was a history of normal motor development. However, speech appeared late, and there was a delay in speech development. Phrasal speech appeared only at the age of three. Both boys were right-handed, one had slight ambidexterity and used both hands equally.

Research and conversations with parents revealed the following. The mother had some difficulties in learning to read and write. During the examination, she wrote simple phrases without errors. But more subtle tests revealed errors almost as numerous as those in children. Father is left-handed. While learning to write, he was taught to write with his right hand. As a child, my father stuttered slightly. During his school years he had dyslexia. The study children's maternal cousins also had dyslexia, their maternal grandfather had reading impairments, and their paternal great-grandfather had left-handedness and dyslexia.

Thus, genetic research allowed the authors to draw a conclusion about the hereditary nature of some factors causing the occurrence of dyslexia.

B. Hallgren notes in his research that it is clinically difficult to distinguish hereditary cases. However, a study of six pairs of twins allowed the author to confirm the hypothesis of a genetic basis for evolutionary dyslexia.

Reinhold in his work also points to the influence of hereditary factors in the etiology of dyslexia in children. He studied children with reading and writing disabilities with normal intelligence, without hearing or vision abnormalities, and without lesions of the central nervous system. The work notes that reading and writing disorders were familial in nature, that is, the relatives of these children also suffered from them. Analyzing the results of his research, the author concludes that there is a special, congenital form of dyslexia. In these cases of congenital dyslexia, children inherit from their parents qualitative immaturity of the brain in its individual zones. This immaturity of brain structures manifests itself in specific delays in the development of a certain function.

Most authors studying reading disorders in children consider dyslexia as a functional disorder, designating reading disorders in children as evolutionary dyslexia or developmental dyslexia. Evolutionary dyslexia is caused by a delay in the development of mental functions that carry out the reading process normally.

Classification of dyslexia.

Based on their manifestation, there are two forms of dyslexia: literal, which manifests itself in the inability or difficulty of learning letters, and verbal, which manifests itself in difficulties in reading words. However, this division is arbitrary, since both forms can be found simultaneously in the same children.

Thus, S. Borel-Maisonny divided dyslexia into groups:

I. Dyslexia associated with oral speech disorders.

II. Dyslexia associated with poor spatial understanding.

III. Mixed cases.

IV. Cases of erroneous (false) dyslexia.

In children Group I There is insufficient auditory memory and impaired auditory perception. These children have difficulty establishing a connection between auditory and visual perception, between sound and letter. In mild cases, these perceptual impairments appear only at the stage of mastering written speech; in severe cases, these impairments also affect the process of mastering oral speech. In oral speech, these children exhibit a variety of impairments.

Revealing the mechanism of this type of dyslexia, the author, unfortunately, reduces the entire complex picture of speech underdevelopment of these children to sensory (auditory) impairments, to impairments of auditory memory and perception. S. Borel-Maisonny considers oral speech primarily as an auditory function. However, many modern studies prove that even the process of speech perception is carried out by the interaction of speech-auditory and speech-motor analyzers. In addition, speech is a complex multi-level process that cannot be reduced only to elementary auditory perception and motor reproduction. The speech function has a complex system structure. The multilevel structure of the speech functional system I suggests that disorders of both oral and especially written speech cannot be reduced to elementary disorders of the sensorimotor order. In most cases, reading disorders are determined by underdevelopment of higher order functions, underdevelopment of the symbolic language level, and underdevelopment of linguistic generalizations.

In children Group II There are disturbances in the perception of shape, size, location in space, determination of the top, bottom, right, left side, in severe cases - disturbances in kinesthetic memory, inability to imagine unusual positions of the arms and legs in space, disturbances in the body diagram. These children sometimes exhibit motor incoordination and dyspraxia, which are especially noticeable in writing.

Mixed cases of dyslexia ( III group) are the most numerous. At the same time, children have both visual and auditory perception disorders, as well as motor lag. Children with a mixed form of dyslexia pronounce many sounds and words incorrectly, form phrases poorly, take a long time to select words, mix right and left, and poorly distinguish figures by shape and size. Their movements are often awkward, synkinesis and sluggish reactions are observed.

IN IV group brings together children who have neither speech disorders nor underdevelopment of spatial concepts. However, these children did not learn to read well for various reasons (due to incorrect teaching methods, unfavorable environmental conditions, due to pedagogical neglect, etc.).

Difficulties in mastering reading can arise when parents use the wrong method of teaching reading: the global method (whole words) or the letter-subjunctive method (m + a = ma).

Reading difficulties appear as young children master reading. If six-year-old children easily master reading, then 3-4 year old children are not yet ready to master reading. Therefore, attempts to teach young children to read are accompanied by natural difficulties and errors in reading.

In this regard, it is not recommended to start learning to read too early or too late, or to use different methods of teaching reading at school and at home. It is very important to identify true dyslexics among children who read poorly, with whom systematic, targeted work should be carried out using a specific methodology. These children are taught to read over a longer period of time and at a slower pace.

Based on impaired mechanisms, M. E. Khvattsev distinguishes phonemic, optical, optical-spatial, semantic and mnestic dyslexia. He believes that children only have phonemic and optical dyslexia. Other forms occur with organic brain lesions, with aphasia.

Phonemic dyslexia. With this form of dyslexia, children cannot learn to read correctly for 2 to 4 years. Some people have great difficulty mastering individual letters, but cannot combine them into syllables or words. Others learn letters without much difficulty, but in the process of reading syllables and words they make a large number of mistakes. For these children, “the letter is not a signal of a generalized speech sound (phoneme), and therefore is not a grapheme (generalized graphic sign)” ( Khvattsev M. E. Speech therapy. M., 1959, p. 385.). The author believes that the poor connection between sound and letter is due to poor phonemic hearing. The speech sounds of these children are unclear, unstable, they distinguish them poorly, especially oppositional sounds that are similar in sound. Therefore, letters are learned with great difficulty.

In the process of reading words, children find it difficult to merge sounds into syllables and words by analogy with already memorized syllables, and they have difficulty recognizing syllables in their “face”.

Optical dyslexia consists “in the failure to recognize letters as generalized graphic signs of the corresponding phonemes, i.e. letters are not recognized as graphemes” ( Khvattsev M. E. Speech therapy. M., 1959, p. 387.). Thus, a violation of the formation of ideas about the connections between a phoneme and a grapheme is observed in both phonemic and optical dyslexia. The difference in the mechanisms of disruption of the connection between phoneme and grapheme in these two forms of dyslexia is not clearly shown.

Based on its manifestations, M.E. Khvattsev distinguishes between literal dyslexia (individual letters are not recognized) and verbal dyslexia (individual letters are acquired, but words are not recognized). The main reason for poor learning of letters is the unclearness of their perception, the instability of ideas about the letter. Usually, in the visual image of a letter, first of all, its general structure is preserved, but certain details fall out. The letters are mutually similar. Most often, substitute letters are graphically simpler than the letters they replace. The more similar the letters are graphically, the more often they are replaced, especially if these letters are located close to each other in the word. In this regard, according to the author, visual stereotypes of words are developed with great difficulty, and word recognition slows down.

Children with optical dyslexia have visual impairments outside of speech as well. Some of them have difficulty distinguishing familiar faces, similar objects, and draw poorly.

When the right hemisphere is damaged, the author notes, difficulties are observed when reading the left side of a word ( Masha - porridge), mirror reading, the word is read from right to left, permutations of letters and words during reading are noted.

R. Becker also notes the variety of types of reading disorders. She considers it possible to group them into the following types: 1) congenital word blindness, 2) dyslexia, 3) bradylexia, 4) legasthenia, 5) congenital weakness in reading. However, this classification is not based on the pathogenesis of dyslexia, but rather on the degree of manifestation of reading impairment.

O. A. Tokareva considers violations of written speech depending on which of the analyzers is primarily impaired. Taking into account the impairment of the auditory, visual or motor analyzers, the author identifies acoustic, optical and motor reading impairments. The most common, according to the author, are dyslexia associated with acoustic disorders. Let's look at these types of dyslexia.

At acoustic dyslexia there is undifferentiation of auditory perception and insufficient development of sound analysis. Children have difficulty combining letters into syllables and words, since the letter is not perceived by them as a phoneme signal. Mixtures of sounds that are similar in articulation or sound (whistling and hissing, voiced and dull, soft and hard) are common.

Acoustic reading impairments are observed both with underdevelopment of oral speech (dysarthria, dyslalia) and with delayed speech development. Thus, s. the connection between the development of oral and written speech, which are considered as different, closely related aspects of a single process of speech development, is established with sufficient reliability.

The definition of this reading disorder as an acoustic reduction of this type of dyslexia to a violation of elementary auditory gnostic functions is probably not entirely justified. Clear acoustic perception is one of the necessary conditions for the formation of oral and written speech. However, the process of mastering written speech presupposes, as the main conditions, the presence of linguistic generalizations in the child, primarily phonemic ones, and the formation of higher symbolic functions. One of the necessary prerequisites for the development of reading skills is the ability to isolate a phoneme from the entire variety of sounds as a specific generalization of the semantic distinctive features of a sound, to correlate a phoneme with a specific symbol, icon, i.e., a letter, to analyze words into their constituent phonemes, i.e., to differentiate phonemes and phonemic analysis. The formation of phonemic differentiation and phonemic analysis is a process of language development, a process of the formation of linguistic generalizations. It cannot be reduced only to sensory function. In addition, it is known that the formation of speech analyzers occurs in close interaction with other analyzers, during the activity of which one constantly influences the other. Thus, when differentiating sounds and sound analysis of a word, both the auditory speech and speech motor analyzers are simultaneously involved.

The second type of dyslexia is optical. With this type, instability of visual perception and ideas is noted. In the process of reading, children do not learn individual letters well, do not establish a connection between the visual image of the letter and the sound, they do not have a clear visual image of the letter, so they perceive the same letter in different ways. Children often mix letters that are similar in style ( P - N, N - I, Shch - C, Sh - Shch, S - O). In the process of reading words, children experience verbal dyslexia and their recognition of words when reading is impaired.

At motor dyslexia Children have difficulty moving their eyes when reading. In the process of reading, as is known, various movements of the eyeball occur; in normal readers, mainly in the direction of the lines. The act of reading is carried out only under the condition of coordinated, interconnected work of the visual, auditory and motor analyzer. Coordination disorders of these analyzers cause various reading disorders, says O. A. Tokareva. With motor dyslexia, there is a narrowing of the visual field, frequent loss of a line or individual words in a line. In other cases, speech motor reproduction is disrupted. This manifests itself in the fact that children cannot coordinately reproduce the necessary articulatory movements during the reading process in the absence of paralysis and paresis. In this case, there is an inability to remember the necessary speech movements.

Many authors point to disturbances and qualitative differences in eye movements during reading in dyslexics. There is intermittency, spasmodic movements, frequent regressions, backward movements in order to clarify what was previously perceived, fluctuations in the direction of movements, changes in the direction of movements, etc. However, these disturbances in eye movements during the reading process are observed in almost all children with dyslexia and are not as much a cause of reading impairments in dyslexia as a consequence of other difficulties in mastering reading, optical, phonemic, grammatical, etc. difficulties.

Eye movements are especially altered and impaired in optical dyslexia. Any complex perception is based on the joint work of a whole group of analyzers and is not only multireceptor in nature, but is always carried out with the active participation of motor components. Even I.M. Sechenov pointed out the decisive role of eye movements in visual perception. Recently, a number of psychophysiological studies have noted that a motionless eye is practically incapable of perceiving an image that has a complex structure. Any complex perception is carried out with the help of active, exploratory eye movements, and only gradually the number of these movements is reduced.

These facts convince us that isolating motor dyslexia as an independent type is inappropriate. In some cases, these eye movement disorders accompany visual perception disorders and cause optical dyslexia. In other cases, frequent regressions, intermittent movements, and an abundance of excessive eye movements are not the cause, but the consequence of reading difficulties in phonemic, semantic, and mnestic forms of dyslexia.

With the modern understanding of the systemic structure of higher cortical functions, classifications of dyslexia should take into account not so much analytical disorders as the nature of violations of higher mental functions, violations not only of the sensorimotor level, but also of the higher, symbolic, linguistic level.

Thus, the most reasonable is to distinguish the following types of dyslexia in children with normal intelligence: optical(M. E. Khvattsev, O. A. Tokareva), phonemic(R. E. Levina, L. F. Spirova), ungrammatical(L. F. Spirova, R. I. Lalaeva).

Optical dyslexia manifests itself in difficulties in learning letters due to the unclearness of their perception and instability of ideas about visual images of letters. Especially often, during the reading process, children mix letters that are graphically similar. With optical dyslexia, disturbances in the visual analysis of word structure and rearrangement of letters and words when reading can also be observed.

Phonemic dyslexia is caused by underdevelopment of phonemic generalizations in a child, primarily by the immaturity of the phonemic analysis function. Phonemic dyslexia manifests itself in distortions of the sound and syllabic structure of a word (omissions, rearrangements, additions, substitutions of sounds when reading).

Agrammatic dyslexia are caused by the underdevelopment of grammatical generalizations in the child. They manifest themselves in distortions and substitutions of certain morphemes of a word during the reading process (suffixes, endings).

Questions and tasks for self-test.

1. What are the psychophysiological characteristics of the act of reading normally?

2. Tell us about the main stages of developing reading skills.

3. Give a brief historical overview of the development of the doctrine of dyslexia.

4. What modern points of view exist on the definition, terminology, and symptoms of dyslexia?

5. What pathogenetic factors are identified as mechanisms of dyslexia?

LITERATURE.

Ananyev B.G. Analysis of difficulties in the process of children mastering reading and writing. - Izvestia of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, 1950, no. 70.

Becker R. Speech disorders as a factor causing difficulties in learning to read and spell. V scientific session on defectology. M., 1967.

Egorov T. G. Psychology of mastering the skill of reading. M., 1953.

Lalaeva R.I. Reading disorders in children with motor alalia. - In the book: Experience in studying abnormal schoolchildren. L., 1978.

Levina R. E. Disadvantages of reading and writing in children. M., 1940.

Nazarova L.K. Teaching literacy. M., 1965.

Spirova L. F. Reading deficiencies and ways to overcome them. - In the collection: Speech deficiencies in primary school students of mass schools. M., 1965.

Tokareva O. A. Reading and writing disorders (dyslexia and dysgraphia). - In the book: Speech disorders in children and adolescents. Ed. S. S. Lyapidevsky. M., 1969.

Khvattsev M. E. Speech therapy. M., 1959.

Elkonin D. B. Some issues of literacy acquisition. - Questions of psychology, 1956, No. 5.

Speech is a historical gift that was acquired during the process of evolution and defines a person as a rational being. With the help of communication, people adapt to conditions in society, make friends, build families, and get a job. This article will discuss the developmental features of children with speech disorders. This problem affects the formation of the child’s interpersonal relationships in the team and his life in general. It has many causes, both structural and psychological. To correctly assess mental development, parents need to take into account the thinking characteristics of children with speech impairments.

Normal indicators of speech development

Speech development is a mirror of the nervous system, the assessment of which begins in the maternity hospital. The cry, the reason for its occurrence, duration, sonority, and strength are taken into account.

Up to 2-3 months, crying is a characteristic of the baby’s condition. For example, the signal of hunger is piercing, high-pitched and persistent, and the signal of discomfort is sluggish and monotonous. In addition, a pre-speech form of communication arises, which manifests itself in the form of a smile, involuntary sounds, and following an object with the eyes.

At 4 months, the baby’s babbling gives way to babbling, which is characterized by the pronunciation of syllable combinations and the repetition of sounds after those around them. The child reacts to his name, understands where dad, mom, etc. are.

The table describes all the communication skills that a child should master normally, depending on age.

	Speech skills
1 year - 1 year and 6 months	Characterized by monosyllabic simple words and the same sentences. Vocabulary at this age is 60; he can easily repeat words he hears.
1 year 6 months - 2 years	By the age of two, the vocabulary is 200, phrases and two-word sentences appear. Children are interested in the world around them, ask questions, and the process of thinking formation occurs
	Until the 3rd year of life, the child begins to use more complex speech elements, adjectives, and pronouns. Sentences become three- and polysyllabic. Vocabulary: 800-1000 words
	Expanded sentences, grouping items by class
4 years - 6 years	Written speech is being formed

Types and causes of speech disorders

According to the clinical and pedagogical classification, all speech disorders are divided into oral and written. Oral ones are phonation, or reproductive, and structural-semantic.

In the first case, the process of perceiving the addressed speech is not impaired, but the reproduction of one’s own speech occurs either with errors or is completely absent. The phonation form of disorders includes:

Dysphonia is a violation of voice timbre, its strength, pitch, and tonality.
Observed in case of pathology of the vocal apparatus (trauma, infection, etc.)
Dysarthria is a speech disorder that occurs as a result of impaired innervation, while the mobility of the organs of the articulatory apparatus is sharply reduced.
Bradylalia and tachylalia are pathological slowing or speeding up the rate of speech.
Stuttering is a tempo-rhythmic disorder of oral speech, in which tonic or clonic convulsions occur in the form of pauses, interruptions or duplication of individual syllables and sounds.
Rhinolalia - giving the voice a nasal character due to defects in the structure of the speech apparatus.

The structural-semantic form is characterized by complete or partial disorders of utterance and speech perception. This includes: alalia (severe impairment or absence of speech, due to organic pathology up to 3 years), aphasia (defect of early formed speech sphere).

General speech underdevelopment

General speech underdevelopment (GSD) is a complex phonetic, grammatical and semantic violation of the verbal form of communication, with preserved thinking and normal hearing. In children with general speech underdevelopment, the severity of manifestations depends on the degree of unformed speech sphere.

Features of children's speech development depend on the clinical form of OHP, which gives specificity to the clinical picture.

Uncomplicated - occurs in children with MMD (minimal cerebral dysfunction), in which the activity of the emotional-volitional sphere, the tone of skeletal and smooth muscles is reduced, motor regulation is impaired, etc.
A complicated form in children with general speech underdevelopment occurs in diencephalic, cerebroasthenic, hypertensive-hydrocephalic, convulsive, hyperkinetic and other neurological syndromes.
Severe underdevelopment of speech - occurs with morphological pathology of speech centers (Wernicke's and Broca's areas).

Speech development in children with the described pathology occurs depending on the severity. There are:

The first degree characterizes the complete absence of speech.
The second degree - manifests itself in the form of simple, commonly used speech with phenomena of agrammatism. Vocabulary is small.
Third degree - violation of sound and semantic accompanying in the presence of phrasal speech.
Fourth degree - residual problems in speech development (sound pronunciation and lexico-grammar)

The diagnosis of general speech underdevelopment is established on the basis of examination data by a neurologist or pediatrician. This takes into account vocabulary, the number of grammatical and lexical errors.

Features of imagination in children with speech disorders

The development of speech in children directly affects the formation of imagination and creative perception of the world. Outstanding scientists mentioned this in their works: Vygotsky, Rubinstein, etc. Today it is known that the imagination of a child with speech impairment is poor, literal, and one-sided.

In the process of communication, practical generalization of knowledge occurs and an idea of individual objects is created. With the help of speech, the child displays all impressions in words, even those that do not correspond to real perception, thus, children mentally form an idea of what they have never seen. All this indicates that the level of speech development is directly related to imagination.

The peak period of creative development falls on the senior preschool period. At this age, children actively use their imagination in games and activities. It is during this period that preschoolers awaken a creative interest in everything, as well as the desire to become an artist, musician, etc.

Children with speech impairments later form ideas about objects. The thinking of such children is slow, delayed, and aimed at a specific object. This is due to the lack of practical conversational consolidation of the information received. Children with speech disorders are unable to change old or recreate new images in their heads. Children's drawings correspond to a specific task, in Rorschach blots; they can rarely imagine anything in them. The more severe the speech pathology, the greater the creative alienation. This most often occurs in children with general speech underdevelopment. In addition, the emotional sphere in children with ODD is also not expressive.

Physical and mental development of children with speech disorders

Speech development disorder occurs due to two main reasons: organic or functional. Each of them, in addition to problems in communication, is accompanied by characteristics of the mental and physical development of children. Organic brain damage is evidenced by low adaptation to various stressful situations. Such children do not tolerate cold or heat well and are restless. Physical activity is accompanied by rapid fatigue of the body, syncope, and nausea. Fatigue reaches its maximum in the evening, especially at the end of the week, it affects the general somatic condition of the child.

Impaired motor function manifests itself in the form of impaired coordination of movements, balance, stability, inaccuracy in the work of the fingers and articulation organs (general and oral praxis). During lessons, children's physical activity does not correspond to the situation. At their desks, they constantly shake their legs, pick up something in their hands, and can get up and walk around the class during class. There is also increased excitability during changes. They run along the corridors, often fall, and do not respond to comments.

Mental activity in children with impaired speech development also has its own peculiarity. Since childhood, there has been increased irritability and excitability, and mood disturbances. The child is emotionally labile, transfers the perception of the surrounding world onto himself, is constantly worried, afraid and tense. Such children are characterized by vegetative changes in the form of redness of the skin, increased sweating, and trembling.

Speech disorders also have a significant impact on the child’s thinking. In this case, the following characteristics suffer significantly:

Attention is an indispensable property in learning something new. Children with speech disorders have lower scores compared to healthy peers. This is primarily manifested by poor performance at school.
Perception is the process of generalizing and projecting individual information from the surrounding world. Such children have a poor vocabulary, poor discrimination and recognition of letters in any form of representation.
Memory and its impairment are characterized by difficulty in remembering, retaining and reproducing received information.

The described mental and physical changes play a significant role in the overall development of the child. In addition, already at an early age, such children avoid communication and conversational games, which will certainly lead to social maladjustment in the future.

The influence of visual pathology on speech function

Poor vision is a predisposing factor in the development of speech disorders (photo: www.ivona.bigmir.net)

Visual impairments, such as true and false myopia (myopia), farsightedness, astigmatism (changes in the curvature of the cornea), amblyopia (impaired perception of incoming information by the eyes). The diseases described may be congenital or acquired. Each of them has varying degrees of severity, manifesting itself as a slight deterioration in severity, or complete total blindness.

Children with visual impairments are less susceptible to problems in the formation of oral speech. Since the memorization process occurs through auditory analyzers. However, children with visual impairments still take longer to increase their vocabulary, remember grammatical rules, etc. This is due to the lack of visual examples in which visual memory is included in the memorization process.

Children with visual impairments have a big impact on thinking and writing. If blindness is congenital, then imagination and creative perception are practically absent. A disorder of the visual apparatus entails serious consequences in the formation of written speech. In this case, visual learning is replaced by tactile learning.

Diagnosis and correction of speech disorders

Electroencephalography is the main method for diagnosing functional brain pathology (photo: www.likarni.com)

First of all, correction of speech disorders should begin with determining the etiological factor. For example, stuttering occurs for two reasons: organic and psychological. In the first, treatment should be aimed at the disease that caused brain damage (trauma, infection, etc.), and only then at stuttering. In the second case, the emphasis is placed on educating and teaching the patient to speak correctly by a speech therapist, as well as getting rid of the provoking stress factor by a psychologist. Based on this, the diagnostic program is planned. The examination includes instrumental and laboratory methods.

Instrumental ones include electroencephalography (EEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and duplex scanning of the arteries of the head. The described methods are able to detect structural pathology in the substance, brain vessels, determine the location and cause of cessation of blood flow, etc. Laboratory diagnostics are aimed at detecting specific markers of genetic diseases and brain damage.

After determining the exact cause, a corrective action plan is drawn up. Great importance is given to home education of children with speech disorders. In addition to the treatment of neurological pathology, methods of surgical correction of the articulatory apparatus are used. A speech therapist and defectologist also play a significant role in working with children. However, the approach to each patient must be individual, but comprehensive, which is explained by the polyetiology (more than three reasons) of the pathology.

Understanding the relationship between reading impairment and general speech underdevelopment opens up ways to prevent it before the child enters school.

As the data of a number of authors show? A.N. Korneva (1995), V.I. Gordilova, M.Z. Kudryavtseva (1995), G.A. Glinka (1996), T.A. Tkachenko (1999), ? On average, preschoolers with general speech underdevelopment are almost twice as prepared for sound analysis as normal-speaking children. General underdevelopment of speech is manifested in a significant deviation from the norm in the formation of phonemic concepts that form the basis of sound analysis.

Problems in learning to read arise mainly in children suffering from speech defects of the first group, since it is the insufficient development of linguistic means, primarily the phonetic side of speech and phonemic perception, that become an obstacle to mastering literacy not only in preschool, but also in primary school age.

Do speech impairments in a preschooler later, when learning to read and write, lead to the emergence and development of dyslexia? a speech disorder that causes difficulty understanding written language. With dyslexia, reading is slow, guessing, with phonetic distortions and misunderstanding of the meaning of what is read.

Recognizing dyslexia in preschool age is difficult, since it is associated specifically with the perception of written speech. However, other speech disorders, for example, general speech underdevelopment or, especially, phonetic-phonemic underdevelopment are one of the factors that determine the development of dyslexia when learning to read and write.

With speech development disorders, in most cases it is the phonetic-phonemic component of the speech system that suffers. Children experience:

- defective pronunciation of oppositional sounds of several groups; substitutions and confusions predominate, often distortions of sounds;
- insufficient formation of phonemic processes, which entails underdevelopment of the prerequisites for the spontaneous development of skills in the analysis and synthesis of the sound composition of a word and the prerequisites for successful mastery of literacy;
- difficulties in mastering writing and reading.

With general underdevelopment of speech, the lexico-grammatical component of speech also suffers. The vocabulary of children is limited to everyday topics and is qualitatively inferior, i.e. There is an unlawful expansion or narrowing of the meanings of words, errors in use, confusion of words in meaning and acoustic properties. The grammatical structure of children's speech is also insufficiently formed: there are no complex syntactic constructions in the speech, and multiple agrammatisms are noted in simple syntactic constructions.

Difficulties and errors that occur in children with speech impairments when learning to read are primarily associated with insufficient mastery of the sound composition of a word, mixing of acoustically similar sounds, and inadequacy of sound analysis and synthesis. This entails the inability to recreate the correct and accurate sound form of a word in the context of visually perceived graphic signs.

Special studies by R.E. Levina (1968), T.B. Filicheva, N.A. Cheveleva, G.N. Chirkina (1989) showed that there is a connection between the difference between sounds and the memorization of their graphic designation. Insufficient discrimination of acoustically similar sounds leads to difficulties in memorizing the outline of letters and assimilating them as graphemes.

If at the first stages of learning the decisive role is played by the recognition of a letter and the sound associated with it, then later the reading skill turns into visual recognition of the sound analysis of the image of syllables, whole words, and sometimes phrases. The child matches the letters with these images and thanks to this understands the test being read.

If a child does not have a clear idea of what sound-letter elements a word consists of, then it is difficult for him to form generalized sound-syllable patterns. As a result, he cannot combine sounds into syllables by analogy with already acquired easier syllables and recognize them.

The poorer children's ideas about the sound composition of a word, the stronger the reading deficiencies are revealed, since the dependence between the recognition of a syllable or word and the discrimination of the sounds included in their composition appears. The lack of a clear sound image of a word makes it difficult to form a visual image of this word during the reading process. For correct visual perception and recognition of a syllable or word when reading, it is necessary that the sound composition is sufficiently clear and the child can pronounce them correctly.

As for children with general speech underdevelopment, they have a non-contextual perception of the phrase. Its essence lies in the fact that when reading, children perceive words in a phrase in isolation. They do not take into account the characteristic lexical and grammatical connections of words, and if they do, they do not always have sufficient speech preparedness to perceive them. They often cannot group words according to the principle of lexical and grammatical compatibility. This leads to the fact that reading often turns into guessing, which contributes to the replacement of suffixes, endings, and prefixes. Deficiencies in reading acquisition affect reading comprehension. These two sides of the reading process are inextricably linked and mutually determine each other.

Thus, preschoolers with speech impairments have difficulties in mastering literacy, which is determined by the insufficient development of phonetic-phonemic analysis and synthesis and lexical-grammatical connections. Correction of speech development before the start of literacy training in many cases prevents the development of dyslexia and dysgraphia in children of primary school age.