Psychological and physiological measures of 6-7 years old children with special needs
The level of psychological and physiological development of 6-7 years old children is different and is associated with individual needs of development. The most widespread special need is the dominance of the left type of functional brain asymmetry - left-handedness. And the widespread defect among the modern children is the speech defect. Special attention was paid to identifying the features of functional brain asymmetry and to comparing it with speech defects among the surveyed children, because there are already data about the connection between these features in the development in the literature. A comparative analysis of anamnestic data to study the features of the children's perinatal development and to identify the causes of speech defects was made. This analysis allowed revealing a large amount of risk factors among the mothers who had children with speech defects as compared to the mothers who had children with normal speech development. The study of literature proves the existence of ambivalent opinions of different authors about the features of cognitive activity of children with the dominance of left-handedness symptoms. These opinions arise due to neglect the pathology during a pregnancy and labors and the diseases during an early development of child with the dominance of left-handedness symptoms. The results allowed revealing the increased frequency of left-handedness symptoms in an individual type of functional brain asymmetry among the 6-7 years old children with speech defects. Analysis of the research data showed the difference in the formation of cognitive functions between the right- and left-handers: the children with the dominance of left-handedness symptoms had a high level of memory, of verbal mindset; the children with the dominance of right-handedness symptoms had a high level of visual and spatial perception, of manual dexterity. Lower measures of all cognitive functions were obtained among the right-and left-handers show that the burdened anamnesis and not the type of functional brain asymmetry affects the development of cognitive functions of children with speech defects.