ARTICULATION AND ITS DISORDERS (A THEORETICAL STUDY FROM THE POSITION OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGY)
The article analyzes the causes of differences in acquisition of articulate speech in preschool children (aged from 1 to 6 years). The analysis has been performed from the positions of neuropsychology on the basis of generalization of the data from the literature on the topic and the author's own experience of many years. It is shown that rearticulation and spontaneous articulation are different kinds of speech. The author stresses that articulation is effected by different levels of brain structure. Rearticulation is realized by the secondary (gnostic-praxic) cortex of the brain, and spontaneous articulation - by the tertiary (symbolic, linguistic) one. Accordingly, the first kind of articulation refers to the phonetic level of the speech functional system, the second one - to the phonemic (phonological) level. The article shows that the levels of acquisition of phonetic and phonemic articulation do not always coincide. Consequently, we may observe dissociations: the child is able to repeat words, and cannot articulate them spontaneously. Reverse cases, when the child is able to produce spontaneous articulation but cannot repeat words, are possible but less typical. However, they are less common. The suggested approach made it possible to arrive at the following conclusions: a) about the specificity of development of articulation skills and about the peculiar character of the children's expressive speech; b) about the main algorithms of speech acquisition at different stages of speech development. The article includes illustrative material in the form of clinical observations. They carry the main anamnestic information, describe the behavior of the child during consultation, and the general state of their speech and articulation skills. The article contains analyses of clinical statuses of children and their speech diagnoses.