Psychological Premises for Developing Drawing Skills in Senior Preschool Children with Mental Retardation
The article focuses on the issue of creating psychological premises for developing drawing skills in senior preschool children with mental retardation in a preschool learning environment.The article analyzes modern research into the peculiarities of developing visual perception, imagination, and fine motor skills in children with dysontogenetic syndromes in order to account for the relevance of the investigated issue.The article outlines a plan of diagnostic examination of drawing skills development in preschool children and singles out the criteria and typology of drawing skills development in senior preschool children.It discusses the results of an experimental survey aimed at the development of drawing skills in senior preschool children with mental retardation.It presents some concepts and tasks pertaining to the development of psychological premises for encouraging and improving drawing skills in children with mental retardation.It describes some correction procedures that can be employed. One of the procedures is aimed at promoting motivation and at enhancing positive emotional response to drawing in senior preschool children with mental retardation. The primary goal of another procedure is to develop visual perception in children, to help them differentiate between major colours and some shades of colours, to help them differentiate between different geometrical figures, to develop their ability to assess the size and position of figures in a two-dimensional space. One more procedure is aimed at developing creative thinking, at enhancing children’s sensory experiences, at developing their combinatory abilities to deal with images, ideas and movements.The article describes the results of the implementation of a program aimed at the development of psychological premises for drawing in schoolchildren with mental retardation. The results of the program show that the proposed program is effective.