Sensory development of a child with special needs: resources and perspectives

Sensory processes constitute the initial stage and basis of cognition, is the ascent of the mental development of children with special needs. At the level of sensory development, the transition from sensory to rational cognition, from perception to thinking is prepared, the basis of further intellectual and practical activity is formed. The article focuses on the use of opportunities for sensory and intellectual development of the child, aimed at the formation of oral speech, perception and understanding of its content. The expediency and effectiveness of improving articulatory motility, development of visual, auditory, tactile perception of children with special needs with the purpose of correction of sensory and speech disorders are revealed. Hearing as a functional system in the education of children with special needs is aimed at developing their auditory perception and memory. Vision carries the load of both classical function and specific, which provides perception, recognition of phonemes implementers (articulatory images) in the speech stream. Tactile sensations in combination with visual and motor stimulate the cognitive sphere of the child, assimilate and enrich its vocabulary. The sensory and intellectual development of the child while mastering speech contributes to her/his personal development makes it possible to harmonize relations in the social environment. Perception and understanding of speech is a complex multidisciplinary activity of the individual, which teaches: the perception of aggregate sensory stimuli and a set of intellectual actions that in their harmonious combination provide communication needs, understanding of information. Sensory perception in the context of the education and upbringing of children with special needs includes auditory perception of sounds, visual perception of articulation images of phonemes and verbal material (words, phrases, texts), as well as tactile perception of objects, which enables activation of knowledge of the environment, its subject world, content speech. Another component of perception and understanding of speech is intellectual activity, without which it would be inaccessible to the child with special needs interpretation of sensory and speech signals, understanding of the content of speech, the formation of internal speech. In other circumstances, her/his full-fledged speech activity would be problematic