Speech stages. Stages of speech development consultation on the topic. Speech action and its stages

How speech works. Ontogenesis of speech function (stages of speech development). Speech is an integral part of the harmonious development of children. Often parents do not attach importance to deviations in speech development, but practice shows that early speech therapy correction of speech problems is much more effective. Therefore, it is very important to know the stages of speech development in children.

How speech works

Speech is a complex process in which two closely interacting mechanisms can be distinguished: internal speech and external speech.

Inner speech (speech understanding)

Speech understanding is formed through speech hearing. This is the ability to distinguish speech sounds from each other; with its help, the child begins to recognize words and distinguish them from each other. Speech hearing is developed during the first year of life. In children with developmental disorders, hearing is formed much later and with the help of different techniques and exercises.

External speech (or the child's own speech)

It develops on the basis of inner speech. The child tries to reproduce the sounds of the language and words that he hears from the outside. His speech hearing evaluates the result. And if imitation is unsuccessful, the child continues to look for new, more accurate ways of pronouncing. So he gradually learns to speak.

Stages of speech development

In the development of speech, all children go through the same stages, but the individual characteristics of each child leave their mark on the picture of his speech development and can cause deviations. These deviations most often relate to the age at which certain speech abilities arise. Sometimes these deviations do not go beyond the norm, and sometimes the formation of speech in a child is delayed, and then they talk about a delay in his speech development.

The active formation of speech in children begins almost from birth (there is an opinion that it begins in the prenatal period). First, understanding of speech appears, then one’s own, external speech develops.

Speech understanding develops on the basis of phonemic (speech) hearing. Already in the first month of life, the child distinguishes human speech from other sounds. At three months he recognizes his mother's voice and distinguishes intonations.

By about five months, he understands some words and the most frequent calls (Let's eat. Give me a pen.).

After six to seven months, speech understanding develops rapidly, but depends on the child’s natural abilities, as well as on the speech environment in which he is located.

The child also develops his own speech immediately after birth. The first manifestation of speech is a cry, then vowel sounds appear. In the second month, the baby begins to laugh. At three months, humming appears (long-drawn repetition of vowel sounds combined with consonants AA, A-GU, etc.), then babbling appears (pronunciation of more complex combinations of sounds, including repetition of the syllables BA-BA, PA-PA , MOTHER).
But all these initial experiences of pronunciation are not yet the result of deliberate imitation of speech sounds, but are produced by the child unconsciously, instinctively.

The formation of one’s own meaningful speech, strange as it may seem, begins with a gesture. The first to appear is the pointing gesture and the gesture with which the child reaches for the object. In fact, these gestures depict actions and are peculiar analogues of verbs (look at or do something with this object and give).

Then words join gestures, but they never completely supplant gesticulation. The gesture is, as it were, included in the internal semantic structure of the word, “collapsed”, sometimes even to the point of “internal” gesticulation, barely noticeable to the eye. In an adult, sign language always accompanies normal speech, and sometimes somewhat precedes it (as if “launching” it). So the important role of gesture in speech remains forever.

After about six months, the child begins to consciously imitate speech sounds and pronounce chains of sounds reminiscent of words. By the end of the first year, he appears the first simple words (dai, mama, baba), as well as truncated forms of more complex words.

After a year, too many individual characteristics and originality appear in the speech development of children, so that it becomes difficult to somehow typify it. In general, by the age of one and a half years, a child should have a simple phrase (action + object). Words in these phrases may not be fully pronounced, and parts of the sentence may be omitted.

By the age of two, a child should be able to pronounce a sentence of three to four words. It’s time for him to start formalizing his speech grammatically (not always yet, of course), that is, to use endings (for example, the plural, including incorrectly: doll - dolls), it’s time to use some suffixes (for example, diminutive), prefixes ( came, went). At this age, it is the level of development of phrasal speech, and not the richness of the vocabulary, that determines how favorable the child’s speech situation is.

After two years, a normally developing child already understands speech well and correctly follows available instructions. By the age of three, he should have formed a complex (of several words), full-fledged, well-formed phrase using prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, that is, almost all linguistic means. For this age, it is considered normal to incorrectly pronounce certain sounds: most often (P), (L), hissing and whistling.

Thus, by the age of three, the development of a child’s speech is basically and in principle completed, and its further development consists of gradual improvement and complication of already established linguistic forms.

Features of speech development in children with intellectual disabilities

A characteristic feature of the speech development of children with intellectual disabilities is the late development of speech. A sharp lag is observed already in the period of pre-speech vocalizations (babble appears in the period from 12 to 24 months). The first words appear later than 3 years, sometimes from 2.5 to 5 years (normally, the appearance of the first words in children is from 10 to 18 months). The appearance of phrasal speech also lags significantly behind.

Speech disorders in mentally retarded children are characterized by persistence; they are eliminated with great difficulty, remaining for life.

In children with mental retardation:

1. Phonemic (speech) hearing suffers, and hence such disorders as defects in sound pronunciation, underdevelopment of grammatical structure (agrammatisms), dyslexia, and dysgraphia.
2. There is a violation of general motor skills, in particular articulatory motor skills. These two disorders together give rise to a sensorimotor defect (distinctive - pronunciation).
3. Impaired motivation, decreased need for verbal communication.
4. Poor dictionary, big gap between active and passive dictionaries.

Children with mental retardation can experience all forms of speech disorders: alalia, dysarthria, rhinolalia, dysphonia, dyslexia, dysgraphia, stuttering, etc.

The peculiarity of speech disorders in mentally retarded children is that the dominant defect in their structure is a semantic defect. Speech disorders in mentally retarded children manifest themselves against the background of gross impairment of cognitive activity and abnormal mental development in general. Speech disorders are systemic in nature, i.e. speech as an integral functional system suffers.

Types of speech disorders:

Alalia is a violation of the development of language ability in children with normal hearing and primarily intact intelligence. Occurs with organic brain lesions in the pre-speech period.

Dysarthria– a violation of the sound-pronunciation and prosodic aspects of speech, caused by insufficient innervation of the speech apparatus. Dysarthria is a Latin term and translated means disorders of articulate speech. The term “dysarthria” combines all forms of sound pronunciation disorders: from distortion of sounds (fuzzy, blurred speech) to nasal, slurred, poorly perceived pronunciation.

Rhinolalia– pathological change in voice timbre and distorted pronunciation of speech sounds as a result of disruption of the normal participation of the nasal cavity in the process of speech formation.

Stuttering is a violation of the tempo-rhythmic organization of speech, caused by the convulsive state of the muscles of the speech apparatus.

Dysphonia (aphonia)– absence or disorder of phonation due to pathological changes in the vocal apparatus.

Dyslexia– partial specific disorder of the reading process.

Dysgraphia– partial specific violation of the writing process.

The consequence of the above-mentioned features of speech development in mentally retarded children are vocal, prosodic and articulatory-phonemic defects. All this significantly impairs the intelligibility, intelligibility, smoothness and clarity of speech.

The development of speech in a child is not only an element of socialization, but also an important indicator of the development of intelligence. With the advent of all kinds of electronic devices in recent decades, the need for people to communicate verbally has decreased, including the need for parents to communicate with their children.

In this regard, in practice, I increasingly began to notice a shift in the timing of speech development; children have a reduced incentive to verbally express their needs. Most parents don't pay attention to this. However, this may be a sign of delayed development of the child in general and speech development in particular. Usually in such cases, doctors prescribe drug treatment, this helps stimulate the development of the articulatory apparatus and creates favorable conditions for speech therapy, which is carried out by a speech therapist.

However, it is not always worth resorting to treatment with medications; it is much more effective to consult a speech therapist in the early stages, when, perhaps, the problem has not yet formed.

When counseling children, unfortunately, we constantly hear from parents that experts recommended correcting violations at the age of 5-6 years, “before school,” “later,” “when the child is ready.”

Mastering speech skills is a complex process that occurs differently for each child. It includes the formation of spoken language, understanding of spoken words, expression of one’s own thoughts, emotions, desires using language.

The correctness and success of mastering speech skills depends largely on the environment and the characteristics of upbringing in the family and educational institutions. Today we will talk about what stages of speech development exist, and also find out the normative deadlines corresponding to each age period.

The role of speech in the psychological development of a child is difficult to overestimate. This is why obvious speech disorders lead to a number of negative consequences:

• the baby’s development of cognitive processes slows down;
• character traits develop that interfere with communication with others (withdrawal, indecisiveness, low self-esteem);
• Difficulties arise in mastering school skills - writing and reading, which reduces children's academic performance.

To reduce the risk of such violations, it is important to know the sequence in which children learn the rules of their native language and the norms for the formation of speech skills.

Main stages of speech development

Russian psycholinguist and psychologist Alexey Leontiev identified several important periods of speech development through which every baby goes.

1. Preparatory stage lasts from birth to one year, divided into three periods:

• Crying is the only way a newborn can interact with the outside world and the first vocal reaction. With its help, the baby not only signals to his mother that he feels discomfort, but also trains breathing, voice and articulation;
• humming (up to 6 months) is the baby’s reproduction of certain sounds and their various variations: boo-oo-oo, a-gu, a-gy, etc. Psychologists call the baby during this period a musician who tunes his instrument. It is very important to support the child’s desire to communicate by speaking and repeating “what your child has said”;
• babbling (up to one year) is the final stage of preparing the baby for full speech. Now the baby begins to pronounce syllables, for example, “pa”, “ba”, which are associated with certain people. “Ma-ma,” says the child, addressing his mother.

Read also: The child does not speak at 3 years old. Causes and solutions to the problem

1. Pre-school stage begins with the appearance of the first words (usually from 12 months) and ends at the age of three.

Children's first words are of a generalized nature. For example, with the word “give” the baby denotes an object, his desires, and a request. That’s why only close people understand the baby and only in a specific situation.

From the age of one and a half, children learn to pronounce words in full, and not in a truncated form. The vocabulary continues to grow, the child puts together small sentences without prepositions: “Katya kitty” (Katya has a cat), “Katya am-am” (Katya wants to eat).

By the age of three, questions appear in children’s speech: “Where?”, “Where?”, “When?”. The baby begins to actively use prepositions, learns to coordinate words in number, case and gender.

1. Preschool stage Speech development lasts from three to seven years. At this time, the volume of active and passive vocabulary increases significantly. If children of the fourth year of life often use simple sentences in speech, then by the age of five they already communicate in compound and complex sentences. And by the end of the preschool stage, children usually pronounce sounds correctly, construct sentences correctly and have a broad outlook.

Speech development norms by age

Is everything okay? Many mothers ask this question, worrying that their babies speak few words, their speech is slurred, etc. We offer the boundaries of normal speech development, with the help of which you can monitor the development of language skills in your child.

At 6 months the baby:

• reproduces sounds with intonation;
• reacts to his own name (turns his head);
• is interested in sound sources, especially if they come from significant adults;
• reacts by crying or smiling to a friendly or angry tone.

At 12 months the baby:

• uses several simple words (or fragments thereof) in speech;
• follows simple instructions, especially if mom gestures to take or bring.

Read also: Speech development according to Maria Montessori's method

At 18 months children:

• have an active vocabulary of up to 20 words, mostly nouns;
• echolalia is often used in speech - repeating a heard phrase over and over again;
• show one of the body parts at the request of the parents (“Where is the nose?”);
• they speak “gibberish” in an emotional and slurred manner.

At 2 years old the child:

• names several familiar objects from his environment;
• composes the simplest sentences, most often consisting of verbs and nouns - “Kisya bites” (the cat eats);
• shows five parts of the body at mother’s request (“Where is your nose?”);
• can use up to 150-300 words in speech;
• knows and uses several pronouns – “mine”, “mine”, “mine”;
• skips a number of sounds - zh, sh, z, s, r, l, ts, shch (“mosno” instead of “possible”).

At 3 years old children:

• have an active vocabulary of 1000 words, usually verbs;
• begin to use plural nouns;
• know the main parts of the body and can show and name them;
• use conjunctions “if”, “when”, “because”;
• state their gender, name and age;
• understand short tales and poems told and read;
• understand simple questions and answer them more often in monosyllables.

At 4 years old kids:

• use up to 2000 words in speech;
• reduce, rearrange and omit words less;
• answer questions, retell well-known stories and fairy tales;
• sometimes hissing and whistling sounds are pronounced incorrectly;
• they ask a lot of questions - both simple and quite unexpected;
• They speak in compound and complex sentences - “I hit Vasya because he took the typewriter.”

At 5 years old a child:

• expands your vocabulary to 2500-3000 words;
• can make up a story based on a picture;
• applies generalizing concepts (flowers, wild animals, shoes, transport, etc.);
• uses all parts of speech in sentences - adjectives, pronouns, participles, interjections, etc.;
• speaks a language understandable to adults, although there are also errors in stress and declension of nouns;
• pronounces all sounds clearly, identifying vowels and consonants, hard and soft.

As mentioned earlier, in the first years of life a child goes through three stages of language acquisition.

First stage. The preparatory stage is preverbal development of communication.

The stage covers the first year of children's lives. It is of extreme importance in the genesis of the child’s verbal function. Research carried out in the laboratory of psychology of early and preschool children at the Research Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR found that during the first year a child changes at least two forms of communication with surrounding adults:

• · Situational and personal communication with close adults (develops by the second month). It is characterized by the following features: 1) communication is in the position of the leading activity of children, mediating all their other relationships with the world; 2) the content of children’s need for communication comes down to the need for the friendly attention of adults; 3) the leading motive among communication motives is the personal motive; 4) the main means of communication with other people for infants is the category of expressive (expressive-facial) movements and poses.
• · Situational business communication (develops at the end of the first half of the year, when the child masters grasping). It is characterized by: 1) communication unfolds against the background of objective manipulations that constitute a new type of activity for the child, which takes the leading position; 2) the content of children’s need for communication is enriched with a new component - the child’s desire for cooperation, for joint action with surrounding adults; this component does not cancel the previous need of children for the benevolent attention of adults, but is combined with it; 3) the leading motive among communication motives is the business motive, since children, prompted by the practical tasks of manipulative activity, are now looking for contacts with adults; 4) the main means of communication with surrounding people for infants is the category of figurative (object-active) movements and postures - objective actions transformed to function as communicative signals.

Since the emotional and first simple practical contacts that occur between children and adults within the framework of the first two forms of communication do not require the child to master speech, he does not master it.

However, verbal influences make up a large and significant part of an adult’s behavior towards a child. It is therefore fair to assume that infants develop a special relationship to sounds early on.

speech due to their inextricable connection with the figure of an adult, who constitutes for the child the center of the world at the stage of situational-personal communication and a very important part of it at the stage of situational-business communication.

We can say that in the first year of life, children exhibit so-called vocal communication - a set of verbal influences of adults in relation to the child and him, the child, pre-speech vocalizations (screams, squeals, complexes of various sounds).

There is an assumption that even in the preverbal period, the child develops a special relationship to the sounds of speech of surrounding adults. The attitude is characterized by the predominant selection of speech sounds among other - non-speech - sounds and an increased emotional coloring of the perception of the first.

Thus, already in the first months of life, children begin to identify and record the speech influences of the people around them among sound stimuli. It can be assumed that a selective attitude towards the sounds of words in comparison with sounds from physical objects constitutes the first, initial level of selectivity of speech hearing in children.

By the end of the first year, children experience a deepening of the analysis of the speech sounds themselves: two different parameters are distinguished - timbre and tonal.

For speech sounds, the main constituents and constants are specific timbres. Speech hearing is a timbre-based hearing.

In the second half of the year, the child moves on to more complex interaction with adults, during which the child develops a need for new means of communication to achieve mutual understanding with the adult. Speech becomes such a means, initially passive (understanding), and then active (initiative statements of the child himself).

Second phase. Stage of speech emergence.

The second stage serves as a transitional stage between two eras in the child’s communication with people around him - preverbal and verbal. This stage covers the period from the end of the first year to the second half of the second year. In the case of delayed speech development, it can last for a year or a year and a half.

The main events occurring at the second stage are the emergence of understanding of the speech of surrounding adults and the appearance of the first verbalizations. Both events are closely related, and not only in time, but also in essence. They represent a two-pronged way of solving one communicative problem. The adult sets the task for the child - he requires the children to perform an action according to verbal instructions and in some cases provides for not only locomotor or object action, but also verbal action. If an adult does not provide for a verbal response and does not insist on it, then in children a gap forms between the level of development of passive and active speech with a lag in the latter. Both the understanding of an adult’s speech and the verbal response to it are carried out on the basis of active perception of the statement and its pronunciation. In this case, pronunciation acts both as a perceptual action, modeling specific speech timbres, and as a way of arbitrary articulation of the spoken word.

The concept of a communicative speech task does not imply a clear awareness by the individual of the requirements facing him or their verbal formulation. The term task denotes a problem situation that objectively faces an individual, which has a motivating force for the subject, but is conscious or verbally formulated by him in a variety of forms, or is not even realized at all.

A mandatory component of such an understanding of the task is the recognition of its motivating effect on the individual. An example of such a task, as a rule, is the situation of individual interaction between an adult and a child. Using simple methods, an adult attracts the child’s attention to an object, for which he points to the object, performs certain manipulations with it, hands it to the child, immerses himself in examining the object, etc. At the same time, the adult pronounces a word denoting an object and repeats this word repeatedly.

Thus, the child is presented with two main elements of the task: the object and its verbal designation - in connection with each other. In addition, the adult creates a practical need for the child to internalize this connection and learn to actualize it. For this purpose, the adult either asks the child to name the indicated object, or names it himself and waits to see if the child finds the desired object among a group of others. The child’s successful action is rewarded by giving him an object for the game, which sometimes includes an adult.

This situation exactly reproduces the situation of developing conditioned reflexes from the category of so-called voluntary movements, described by Pavlov. It is not surprising, therefore, that the decisive condition for success is the level of need that motivates the child to do the enormous nervous work necessary to close the nervous connection.

For children acquiring speech, the situation is immeasurably more complicated. It can be assumed that children’s assimilation of passive speech and their utterance of the first active words depends to a decisive extent on the communicative factor. Since by the end of the 1st year the child has already mastered two forms of communication and has accumulated a relatively rich experience of interacting with various people, this communicative factor should be a rather complex formation in which three sides can be distinguished, each of which is the result of what has been established over many months contacts of the child with surrounding adults: a) emotional contacts, b) contacts during joint actions and c) vocal contacts.

Emotional contacts. Many early childhood researchers point to delays in the speech development of a child growing up in conditions of hospitalization or spending a significant part of his time in a children's institution, where much attention is paid to the physical care of children, where there are many toys and many talking adults serving the child, but the child lacks close, personal contacts.

It has been suggested that children who lack personal, emotionally charged contact when communicating with adults experience a lag in speech development. The same thing happens when there are any defects in this contact.

By two months, the emotional connection between an adult and a child develops into complex activities, the main content of which is the exchange of expressions of mutual pleasure and interest. The importance of emotional contacts remains at all levels of the form of situational business communication.

It can be assumed that in the presence of a person to whom the child feels affection and affection, children will feel more at ease, will become free to navigate their surroundings, will be able to promptly switch attention from one element of the situation to another, and therefore will be more likely to be able to connect the type of object and its the name is as required by the task put forward by the adult.

Further, the experience of a close relationship with an adult helps the child quickly identify a communicative speech task and find means to solve it. Children look more boldly into the face of a close adult, are more likely to detect the movement of a person’s lips when he articulates a word, and more quickly adopt this movement by examining and feeling with his hand. Facts of this kind make it possible to imagine the ways in which emotional contact with adults influences the formation of visual-auditory connections in children. Affective disposition toward adults enhances young children's tendency to imitate. It is logical to think that the same tendency may appear in relation to the movement of the speech organs. This means that articulating the name of an object will cause a child’s tendency to repeat the words spoken by adults and, therefore, will contribute to children’s acceptance of the communicative speech task and will give it an incentive effect.

Thus, it is natural to assume that emotional contacts with an adult can have a stimulating effect on the development of verbal function due to the fact that they make the child want to speak as an adult speaks. Added to this is the growing focus of the child’s orienting-exploratory activity on the speaking adult and the correlation of this with the objective elements of the situation.

Contacts during joint activities at the beginning of the stage of speech formation also constitute a significant part of the child’s social experience.

Practical cooperation with an adult in conditions where elders organize children’s activities, help carry them out and control the process of its implementation, leads to the child forming the position of a younger partner, guided by an adult. If the objective activity of children, starting from the second half of the year, is formed autonomously, without the participation of an adult, then in this case the activity of communication remains at a lower level and does not go beyond the limits of situational and personal communication.

In this case, a child who has no practical experience of cooperation with an adult knows how to manipulate objects and works well alone with toys, but if an adult approaches him, the child does not engage in joint activities, wanting to receive only affection from the adult. Such a child quickly loses an object handed to him by an adult; he does not experience interest in toys in the presence of adults; Absorbed in the contemplation of an adult, the child often does not seem to see the object and can look “through” it at the person for a long time.

The most important significance of situational business communication lies in the fact that the child learns to perceive an adult as an older partner cooperating with him and does not so much seek his affection as naturally includes him as the most important component in the problematic situation in which he himself finds himself. Further, his attention is focused precisely on the actions of the adult - on his manipulations with the object and on his articulation of the name of the toy. And finally, the child tends to associate the encouragement of an adult with his own actions; he seeks approval of his attempts and is therefore able to quickly discard incorrect acts (for example, shouting to give him an object or stubborn attempts to silently reach for an object) and consolidate acts leading to the goal ( studying the articulatory movements of an adult, attempts to actively repeat a word spoken by an adult).

Thus, we can say that the practical contacts of a child with an adult in the course of joint actions organize the child’s orientation, help him identify the key components of the situation and highlight the main points in the task set by the adult.

At the same time, the use of voice contacts has a special meaning, separate from situational and personal communication in general. The fact is that the use of vocal sounds as communicative signals prepares the child for mastering speech, directing his attention to that, so to speak, matter in which the information sent to the partner can be embodied. If a child is not presented with vocal sound as a carrier of communicative information, he does not independently discover the possibilities that are hidden in this sound for communication activities.

It is known that if a child, due to special circumstances, finds himself outside the human environment and does not hear the speech of adults at an early age, he does not develop his own speech (“Mowgli children”). This connection is also evidenced by the development of deafness in normally hearing children raised by deaf-mute parents and isolated from the wider social environment. True, some experts emphasize the innate nature of the child’s ability to speak. But they also consider audible speech as sound material from which the child later constructs speech.

It is known that when the norm of audible speech falls below a certain limit, a state of speech sensory deprivation occurs, which inhibits the verbal development of children. These facts are observed in children raised in the first months of life in a closed children's institution. Many researchers believe that speech that is sonically monotonous, not colored with vivid emotions, and not directly addressed to the child also has a negative impact on verbal development. On this basis, the concept of a speech nutrient environment that is conducive to the development of speech in children is put forward. In such an environment, children develop a need to understand speech, without which the highest saturation of the child’s experience with verbal impressions turns out to be useless. On the contrary, children’s observation of speaking adults and adults’ close attention to children’s vocalizations, adults’ joy in response to the child’s vocal manifestations, and adults’ encouragement of each new vocal sound lead to the consolidation and progressive restructuring of pre-speech vocalizations with their gradual approach to the speech of surrounding adults.

The connection between pre-speech vocalizations and speech is indicated by a number of their features. Thus, according to careful research by R.V. Tonkova-Yampolskaya, pre-speech vocalizations are a way of modeling the intonation pattern of audible speech. Using electroacoustic methods, the presence of an intonation pattern was discovered already in the cry of a baby. Subsequently, along with the formation of vocal activity, the formation of intonation occurs: the older the child, the more complex intonations are contained in his vocalizations. V. Manova-Tomova showed that children model speech sounds presented to them for listening under special conditions in cases where in the surrounding conversational environment these sounds are rare or absent altogether.

It is important to note that during vocal communication, children develop sound complexes, which later begin to be used by the child as their first words. These are babbling formations such as “ma-ma”, “pa-pa”, “dya-dya”, “na”, etc. Adults readily pick up these babbling formations, repeatedly return them to the child (“Say: ma-ma”) and thereby record them in the repertoire of children’s vocalizations. Adults consciously associate individual sound complexes of children with objects or actions (“That’s right, it’s dad!”), thereby facilitating children’s assimilation of the nominative function of speech. Consequently, adults constantly process the vocal production of children, which undoubtedly favors the development of speech in the child.

Thus, a child’s vocal contacts with adults can have a positive effect on the development of verbal function due to the fact that they direct children’s attention to that sound matter, which then becomes a carrier of information transmitted from one partner to another. At the same time, babbling vocalizations provide children with the first ready-made form to fill with conceptual content, displacing the purely expressive load that these vocalizations had before. However, it can also be assumed that the speech influences of adults heard by children can have a positive effect on the development of verbal function in children only if these influences are included in the process of communication between the child and an adult, so that understanding the speech of surrounding people and constructing one’s own active utterance becomes important importance for the child’s contacts with adults.

Third stage. Stage of development of speech communication.

The third stage of development of speech communication covers the period from the appearance of the first words to the end of preschool age. During this time, the child, having traveled a long way, gradually masters the word and learns to use it for communication.

There are two main lines along which verbal communication develops in early and preschool age: firstly, a change in the content of communication and the development of the corresponding functions of speech as a means of communication; secondly, mastering voluntary regulation by speech means.

Research indicates a change in three forms of communication during the third stage. The first of them is situational business communication, which we already mentioned earlier. True, in children older than l 1/2 -2 years, this form of communication changes significantly: it ceases to be preverbal and now occurs using speech. However, maintaining the same content of the need for communication (this is the need for cooperation with an adult) and the leading motive (this motive remains business) leaves an imprint on the speech serving this activity. At first, after its emergence, speech, like other means of communication, remains situational: the child uses a word to designate the elements of a given visual situation (objects, actions with them), the word becomes a kind of conventional vocal indicating gesture. The child catches the adult’s demand, understands that something should be said, but initially does not pay attention to what exactly he needs to articulate. Therefore, the child says either a word that he has already learned earlier, or some syllable and even a sound that has received the approval of an adult. Here the situational nature of the first words in the mouth of a child, their gestural (indicative) character and convention are revealed in their naked form.

Only very gradually the underwater part of the word is filled with conceptual content and opens up the opportunity for children to break the bonds of one particular situation and enter the space of broad cognitive activity. The appearance in children of the first questions about the hidden properties of things, as well as about objects and phenomena that are absent at a given time or place (not sensually presented), marks the child’s transition from early situational forms of communication to more developed extra-situational forms.

The first of them, and the third in the general genetic order, is the form of extra-situational cognitive communication. The main parameters of extra-situational cognitive communication are as follows: 1) within the framework of this form, contacts of children with adults are associated with their cognition and active analysis of objects and phenomena of the physical world, or the “world of objects”, in the terminology of D.B. Elkonina; 2) the content of children’s need for communication is their need for respect from an adult; 3) among the various motives of communication, the leading position is occupied by cognitive ones, embodied for the child in the erudition and awareness of an adult; 4) the main means of communication here is speech, since only the word allows children to overcome the framework of a private situation and go beyond the immediate time and place.

Satisfying children's cognitive interests leads to a deepening of their acquaintance with the environment and to the involvement of the world of people - objects and processes of the social world - in the sphere of their attention. At the same time, the form of children’s communication is also restructured - it becomes non-situational and personal. Its distinctive features: 1) extra-situational personal communication takes place against the background of play as a leading activity, but often takes the form of separate, independent episodes; 2) the content of children’s need for communication is their need for mutual understanding and empathy from an adult, since the coincidence of the child’s opinions and assessments with the views of elders serves as a criterion for children for the correctness of these assessments; 3) among the motives of communication, the leading place is occupied by personal ones, personified in an adult as a subject who has his own special moral qualities, moral virtues, and a comprehensive rich individuality; 4) the main means of communication, as at the level of the third form, are speech operations. Thus, the first line of development of speech means of communication is expressed in the fact that these operations gradually lose their situational nature, are filled with truly conceptual content and give children the opportunity to go beyond the current situation into the wide world of things and people. It can be assumed that in this regard, preschoolers experience changes in the very matter of speech, the nature of the vocabulary used by children, the construction of sentences, and the general expressiveness of speech.

Mastery of voluntary regulation of speech activity. At an early age, it is not easy to get a child to pronounce even those words that he has mastered well. But gradually the difficulty with which children pronounce words passes, completely disappearing during school years.

At an early age, many factors inhibit a child’s speech, preventing it from being controlled by either an adult or, sometimes, even the child himself. Embarrassment at the sight of a stranger very often becomes one of the factors that inhibits children’s speech. At the same time, the child becomes very timid, speaks in a whisper or is completely silent, and his speech is greatly impoverished.

This means that when talking with close adults, children are less situational, more trusting, and show more developed interests than when talking with strangers, when the child seems to go down one or two steps lower in all his manifestations.

However, with age, children increasingly master the voluntary regulation of speech, and this is an indispensable condition for their education in kindergarten and, in particular, their preparation for school.

Thus, the essence of the third stage is that children completely master the conceptual content of the word and learn, with its help, to convey to their partner all the more complex and abstract information in content. At the same time, the verbal function turns into an independent type of activity, since the child learns to regulate it voluntarily. Speech activity can then develop further in relative independence from the direct process of live communication between the child and a specific adult.

What all deaf children with CIs have in common is that, after connecting and configuring the CI processor, all of them have the potential to hear the quietest sounds and distinguish all speech sounds, including high-frequency ones.

In the first period after implantation, the development of auditory perception is the leading direction of correctional work. Our goal is to develop the perception and discrimination of non-speech and speech sounds in a child with CI. The child's ability to analyze non-speech and speech sounds should approach that of a child with normal hearing at the age of 2 years. Thanks to this, the child should learn to recognize surrounding sounds, recognize and memorize frequently used words and phrases by ear. With the help of hearing, a child should develop an understanding of speech on an auditory-visual and auditory basis and his own speech. In the rehabilitation of early-deafened children after cochlear implantation, in our opinion, 4 stages should be distinguished, which partially overlap with each other:

1. The initial stage of development of auditory and auditory-speech perception with CI.

Duration - 3-12 weeks.

2. The main period of development of auditory and auditory-speech perception with CI.

Duration - 6-18 months.

3. Language stage of development of speech perception and one’s own speech.

Duration - 5 or more years

4. Stage of development of understanding of coherent speech and complex texts.

The first stage is almost exclusively related to the development of auditory perception with CI. The second is associated with the development of auditory-verbal perception along with the development of the system of the native language and oral speech. The 3rd and 4th stages are associated only with the development of language and speech. If stage 1 is specific for children with CIs, then the next 3 stages are to a certain extent consistent with the auditory and speech development of normal-hearing children.

Identification of specific stages of development of hearing, speech perception and oral speech in children with CIs is important not only for understanding the patterns of their speech development. This also allows you to set specific goals and objectives at each stage of development, choose a working method, predict the development of certain hearing and speech skills in a child, and adjust rehabilitation methods. in the absence of the expected result.

Stage 1 - “the initial stage of development of auditory and auditory-speech perception with CI”

During this period, the settings for the CI speech processor should be achieved, allowing the child to perceive all speech sounds, and the efforts of teachers and loved ones should, first of all, be aimed at developing in the child an active interest in surrounding sounds and speech, a desire to recognize them.

During this period, children with the help of CIs begin to react to sounds of different volumes, including quiet ones (whispers), at a great distance in educational and ordinary situations, if the child’s attention is drawn to the listening process. They have unstable reactions to environmental sounds and names in quiet conditions, although this requires repetition of the sound, and the reaction is usually delayed in time. With proper correctional work, children develop an interest in sounds and a desire to experiment with different sounds.

Children with auditory experience who have used the SA begin to hear sounds that were not heard in the SA, including quiet and distant sounds. They develop stable responses to sounds across the entire frequency range. Moreover, if this is observed at first, when the child’s attention is drawn to listening, then soon they involuntarily react to different sounds, begin to look for their source, and ask what kind of sound it is. Children are actively interested in sounds, play and analyze them, and are surprised at the opportunity to hear new sounds that they did not hear with AS. They learn to recognize familiar sounds and words at a greater distance, and begin to recognize new sounds and words.

During this period, in children who did not speak before implantation, it is important to stimulate vocal activity, pronouncing sounds and words by imitation and independently. Children who had functional speech before implantation begin to use hearing to control it.

These results can be achieved in all children with CIs, but the time required may vary from 3 to 12 weeks. This depends on the child’s hearing experience (progressive hearing loss, constant use of hearing aids). In the absence of such experience, the child adapts more slowly to new sensations. He later achieves the optimal level of tuning of the CI processor due to slow adaptation and difficulties in determining tuning parameters. This is also influenced by whether the child has been prepared for the fitting procedure and the experience of the audiologist fitting the CI processor. Since the auditory centers of the brain are not developed in such a child, he needs more time to learn to isolate individual sound events and recognize them. That is why it is so important that before and after the operation (before turning on the CI processor) the child constantly wears the hearing aid and works with the deaf teacher and parents on the development of residual hearing. They should also prepare the child for the CI processor setup procedure.

The second factor that negatively affects the duration of the initial stage is the presence of concomitant mental disorders in the child. These include impaired visual attention, mental retardation, emotional-volitional immaturity, and impaired development of communication skills. According to our observations, such disorders include central auditory disorders, which, in particular, are characteristic of some children who have lost their hearing due to meningoencephalitis.

The third factor influencing the duration of the initial stage is the presence of intensive classes with a teacher of the deaf and parents on the development of hearing in a child with a CI. A particularly important role is played by parents, who must constantly draw attention to surrounding sounds and arouse his interest in them throughout the day.

Stage 2 - “the main stage in the development of auditory and auditory-speech perception with CIs”

During this period, the child must achieve optimal and fairly stable settings for the CI processor, and most importantly, all the brain mechanisms for analyzing sounds and speech as audio signals must be formed.

During the main period, a child with a CI develops the basic brain (central) processes for analyzing sounds and speech as sound signals. The child learns:

Detect different sounds and different situations, including quiet sounds, sounds in noise,

Hear differences between different sounds, including acoustically similar ones,

Distinguish between different signs of sounds (quiet/loud, one/many, long short),

Distinguish during paired comparisons, recognize vowels and consonants of speech sounds during closed and open choices;

Associate sounds with certain objects and actions that cause them,

Connect words with objects/their properties/actions/concepts that they mean,

The child gradually develops involuntary and voluntary auditory attention;

The child develops auditory and auditory-verbal memory;

He gradually remembers various surrounding sounds and frequently heard words and phrases.

He develops auditory-motor coordination necessary to control his speech.

Thanks to this, hearing begins to work on the development of understanding of speech and one’s own speech in the same way as it happens in hearing children. Further auditory-verbal development and, accordingly, correctional work is carried out within the framework of the development of the child’s speech system, the accumulation of passive and active vocabulary, the development and formation of the grammatical system of the language, and the use of speech for communication.

Children who constantly wore a SA have the best opportunities, even if it did not help them. The processes of auditory analysis are partially formed, they are able to detect sounds (non-speech and words) with SA, distinguish and recognize some of them, mainly by their intonation-rhythmic structure in a situation of closed choice. With a CI, a child has fundamentally new opportunities to develop these skills, but at first, he will do it worse than with AS. This happens because the auditory images of surrounding sounds and words that he has accumulated in memory with AS are different from those that he hears with CI. And this situation is similar to the development of auditory perception with CI in late-deafened patients. A child who has used an SA needs to be re-taught to listen again with a CI to a certain extent. But the process of retraining is proceeding quickly for him and, most importantly, is quickly gaining momentum, thanks to the fact that he constantly wore an hearing aid, which means that his auditory centers of the brain and the processes of auditory analysis have developed. A child with CI in 1-3 months. begins to (spontaneously) learn new words from the speech of others, which was impossible for him with a hearing aid. These children readily learn to hear because, thanks to their auditory experience, they understand that sounds carry different information.

With proper correctional work, the ability to hear and recognize various non-speech and speech sounds with CI in a child who has used an SA develops within 6-18 months.

The greatest difficulties in the development of auditory perception of speech signals are experienced by children over 3 years of age who did not use hearing aids, or those who wore hearing aids, but their residual hearing was not really developed (they did not have listening skills).

But the development of speech understanding will require more time, because it involves the accumulation of the child’s memory of the meaning of words and their auditory images, and knowledge of the grammar of the native language.

Children during this period are characterized by pronounced problems of auditory-verbal memory - the child hears, but does not understand; he repeats the word, but incorrectly shows the object denoted by the word, although it is familiar to him. The child has difficulty remembering a sequence of several words/sounds and cannot remember a poem. Children are characterized by violations of involuntary and voluntary auditory attention - in order for the child to hear the sound and understand the request made, it is necessary to first attract his attention; repetition of the request/word is often required. Children experience high fatigue during hearing load. They poorly understand the speech of others, first of all, because they have a small vocabulary and an undeveloped grammatical system. Children process sound and speech information slowly. In order for the child to hear, understand and remember the words, he must listen carefully (first attract his attention), speak to him more slowly and clearly, repeating the key words of the phrase. Children have difficulty distinguishing acoustically similar sounds, including speech sounds (for example, voiced/voiceless consonants, consonants that differ in place of formation).

These features are, to a certain extent, similar to the development of auditory-speech perception and speech in a child with normal hearing at an early age. These are also manifestations of the immaturity of the auditory centers of the brain and the processing of sound/speech information - a consequence of the fact that the child did not hear at an early age, during the most important period for their development. In addition, with hearing impairment, not only the cochlear receptors, which are replaced by the CI, are often damaged, but also the auditory centers of the brain. The child had these disorders before, but they were masked by the fact that he did not hear.

For most children with CIs, as auditory perception develops throughout the day and during focused activities, auditory memory and attention deficits become less noticeable. This is also facilitated by drug treatment aimed at improving cerebral circulation and nutrition of nerve cells.

In children over 3 years of age, during this period it is important to begin developing the ability to distinguish and recognize speech sounds (phonemic hearing), which is necessary for the spontaneous development of speech perception in a child with a CI.

Of course, this process goes in parallel with the development of the child’s pronunciation skills (sound pronunciation, control of voice characteristics). Thus, non-speaking children develop a natural mechanism for mastering the meaning and pronunciation of words, characteristic of normal-hearing children of early age - echolalia. A normally hearing person also remembers a new word in a foreign language - having heard it, he tries to repeat it several times, while mentally imagining the object or action it denotes.

Children begin to speak and communicate using speech, even if their speech is poorly understood by others and is represented by several dozen words, and the understanding of speech is auditory-visual and limited to the communication situation. Children with “functional speech” quickly grow their vocabulary, although the sound-syllable structure of these words is grossly disrupted.

As our work experience shows, due to the fact that with a CI a child hears all sounds, including quiet ones, the development of brain mechanisms for analyzing sound information occurs largely spontaneously throughout the day, when the child hears the sounds and speech around him, the same as in normal hearing children. During this period, children already have the ability to remember and assimilate the meaning of new words, not only during classes, but also simply by listening to the speech of the people around them. The child learns words that were “not covered” in the lesson, just as happens with hearing children.

However, the sounds transmitted by CIs to the auditory system are distorted to a certain extent, and hearing thresholds are 25-40 dB [5,7]. This means that sounds and speech perceived with a CI contain less useful information and are perceived as less clear compared to a normally functioning cochlea. In addition, in an early-deaf child, the auditory centers of the brain, in which sound/auditory information is processed, are not formed. All these features determine that spontaneous full development of hearing does not occur in children with CIs. Therefore, all children need intensive, targeted classes to develop auditory and auditory-speech perception. They are especially important in the first 2 years of using CIs, while the child still lacks spontaneous listening skills and needs to be developed.

During targeted sessions on the development of auditory and auditory-speech perception with implanted children, it is necessary to consistently develop in them the mechanisms of auditory analysis from simple (for example, detecting sound on and off) to complex ones. Among the most complex and very important from the point of view of the development of a child’s understanding of speech and his own speech are the mechanisms of phonetic analysis, i.e. the ability to distinguish and recognize individual speech sounds (phonemes), both in isolation and as part of syllables and words.

For most children, the duration of the main stage with proper correctional work is 12-18 months. The development of auditory perception with CIs during implantation at an older age depends, first of all, on the child’s auditory experience and the age of implantation. The duration and results of the main stage of development of auditory perception in children with CIs are negatively affected by the presence in the child of primary central hearing disorders associated with damage to the auditory centers of the brain. In children with severe central hearing impairments, it is not possible to develop all the mechanisms of auditory analysis, even with the correct working methods. They continue to have persistent problems with auditory-verbal memory, auditory attention, and do not develop full-fledged phonemic hearing.

Negative factors, of course, include the lack of a speech environment (when the child is in a boarding school) and incorrect methods of correctional work, which not only slows down the rate of development of auditory perception, but may be the cause of low results in general. In the absence of correctional work or inadequate methods, a child with a CI does not develop all the auditory mechanisms necessary for the development of speech perception.

Stage 3 - “linguistic stage of development of speech perception and one’s own speech”

During this period, the child accumulates knowledge about the meaning of words and their sound (passive vocabulary, vocabulary), the rules for changing and combining them in a sentence (grammar - morphology and syntax), and the rules for using speech for communication (pragmatics).

This is the longest period of auditory-speech rehabilitation for children with CIs. Its duration is comparable to the period of mastering the native language in normal-hearing children and is 5-7 years. It can last up to 10 years and is characterized by the fact that the child further develops his understanding of speech and his own speech due to the development of his native language system.

When deciding to undergo cochlear implantation for a deaf child, parents and specialists expect, first of all, that thanks to this he will understand speech and speak. However, there is a huge distance between the ability to perceive all speech sounds, which a CI actually provides, and even the ability to recognize these sounds, which is formed in a child as a result of purposeful work for 6-18 months, and understanding speech. It is due to the fact that understanding speech is based on the presence in a person’s memory of the native language system - knowledge of the meaning of words and their auditory images (passive vocabulary), as well as the rules for changing and combining them in a sentence (grammar). The accumulation of this information in a child with normal hearing takes 6-7 years, while the development of coherent speech continues until the age of 15.

The same thing happens in a deaf child with CI after he has learned to hear and analyze speech sounds. He continues a long language period of development of perception, or more precisely, understanding of speech. It is associated, first of all, with the accumulation in memory of auditory images of words and a passive vocabulary with the formation of a connection between the auditory image of a word and its meaning, the formation of the grammatical system of the language. Thanks to this, the child increasingly understands the speech of others and spontaneously masters new words. This process goes in parallel with the development of his own speech.

During this period, a child with a CI resembles a foreigner who lives in another country and has begun to learn its language. He hears everything, but understands only individual words and frequently used phrases related to the communication situation. He often does not understand others because he does not have time to analyze and remember what they said. It takes him too long to remember what the word means, and the person is already saying another sentence. It is easier for him to understand and remember new words if they speak more slowly and repeat the phrase. Gradually, he accumulates more words in his memory, masters the rules for changing them, combining them into sentences, and using them in communication.

The main tasks of the language stage of development:

1. Development of auditory-verbal memory,

2. Accumulation of a passive (impressive) vocabulary,

3. Development of grammatical concepts,

4. Development of understanding of oral speech (based on the accumulation of vocabulary and the development of grammatical concepts) auditory-visual and auditory,

5. Accumulation of active (expressive) vocabulary,

6. Development of dialogical speech,

7. Development of coherent speech,

8. Development of pronunciation skills, voice control, speech breathing based on auditory control,

9. Development of reading skills (for children implanted after 3 years).

The main thing during this period is the development of the child’s native language system. He must hear his native speech all the time, use it, and receive special classes on speech development. For most children, this is a kindergarten program for children with speech impairments; if implanted after 3 years, it is a kindergarten program for the hearing impaired.

Particular attention should be paid to the development of the child’s auditory perception of the grammatical aspect of speech. This is due to the fact that when perceiving speech in natural conditions, a child with a CI, like a child with degree 1 hearing loss, does not accurately hear the quietest parts of words - endings, prepositions, prefixes. Therefore, he does not master the rules of word formation and inflection depending on gender, number, case, tense, etc. And this is very critical for Russian and many other languages, since endings, prepositions, prefixes are one of the leading formative elements of the language system. Therefore, when communicating with a child, it is important to try to communicate with him at a close distance, from the CI side, pronounce these parts of words more clearly, draw the child’s attention to them, monitor the child’s correct use of endings, prepositions, etc.

The child continues to improve the processes of auditory analysis of sounds and speech:

It processes speech information faster.

He understands speech better and recognizes sounds in noisy environments.

He remembers new words and poems better. There is a further growth of passive and active vocabulary, including spontaneously.

He begins to partially understand speech not addressed to him.

He understands speech spoken by different people on the telephone,

Children implanted after 3 years continue to have auditory-verbal memory problems, although they are less pronounced.

If we compare the tasks and results of the 3 stages, then at the 1st stage they are limited, specific and achievable for all children with CIs. In turn, the tasks and results of the 2nd “main stage” are much more complex, numerous and not achieved by all children. The tasks and results of the 3rd “language stage” are even more numerous and complex, somewhat uncertain, which is associated with the level of language and speech development that can be achieved in a given child. This level at the end of the language stage can be very different and depends on:

From the age of implantation (before 2 years, 2-3 years, after 3 years),

Constant use of SA from an early age,

The state of development of hearing, oral speech, communication skills in the child before implantation,

The child has concomitant disorders (attention, memory, intelligence, emotional-volitional sphere, speech disorders),

Methods of rehabilitation and intensity of training,

Learning environments (speech/non-speech),

Parents' participation in rehabilitation.

According to our observations, these results also depend on the child’s ability to master the language as a whole. The last circumstance can be easily understood if we remember that among normal-hearing people there are people who memorize poetry easily or poorly, who can or cannot speak beautifully, people with different abilities to master foreign languages.

Stage 4 - “the stage of development of coherent speech and understanding of complex texts”

Experts and parents know that many even well-spoken children with impaired hearing (with hearing aids or CIs) do not like to read. Yes, they can read. Many of them attend public school and read textbooks when doing homework. They can quickly read some text on assignment. But if you ask them to tell what the text was about, it turns out that they do not remember what the text was about or remembered some individual details, but did not understand the meaning. This is due to the fact that children do not understand what they read well, because... in fact, they have a small vocabulary, insufficiently developed grammatical concepts, limited knowledge about the world around them, they poorly grasp the logic of events in the story and cause-and-effect relationships.

Therefore, the speech development of a child with a CI continues even after he has learned to understand everyday speech and speak well. The 4th stage of speech development of children with CIs is determined by the further accumulation of vocabulary, the development of the grammatical system and general ideas about the world around them. It differs from the previous stage in that it is a significantly higher level of mastery of the native language. An indicator of its achievement is the child’s ability to understand a complex text read, the ability to retell what he has read, to talk coherently about various events and phenomena, and the ability to communicate with different people using speech. This stage of speech development in children with CIs is similar to the period of speech development that is typical for normal-hearing children over the age of 7 years.

Potentially, this stage of speech development can be achieved by the majority of children implanted before the age of 3, who do not have concomitant mental disorders and who have received adequate rehabilitation at previous stages of development.

Chapter 2. Hearing-speech habilitation of children of early and primary preschool age with a cochlear implant

Related information.

In his psycholinguistic concept of “speech ontogenesis” A. A. Leontiev relies on the methodological approaches of outstanding linguists and psychologists of the 19th-20th centuries - V. Humboldt, R. O. Yakobson, L. S. Vygotsky, V. V. Vinogradov, A. N. Gvozdeva and others. As one of the fundamental conceptual provisions, A. A. Leontyev cites the following statement by V. Humboldt: “The acquisition of language by children is not the adaptation of words, their folding in memory and revitalization with the help of speech, but the development of language ability with age and exercise” (310).

The process of formation of speech activity (and, accordingly, the assimilation of the native language system) in ontogenesis in the concept of “speech ontogenesis” by A. A. Leontyev is divided into a number of successive periods or “stages”.

1st - preparatory (from birth to one year);

2nd - pre-preschool (from one year to 3 years);

3rd - preschool (from 3 to 7 years);

4th - school (from 7 to 17 years old).

The first stage of speech formation covers the first three years of a child’s life. The development of children's speech up to three years of age, in turn (in accordance with the traditional approach accepted in psychology) is divided into three main stages:

1. pre-speech stage (first year of life), in which periods of humming and babbling are distinguished,

2. stage of primary language acquisition (pre-grammatical) - the second year of life and

3. stage of grammar acquisition (third year of life). A. A. Leontyev points out that the time frame for these stages is extremely variable (especially closer to three years); In addition, acceleration occurs in the development of children's speech - a shift in age characteristics to earlier age stages of ontogenesis (139, p. 176).

Language, being a means of implementing RD, as noted above, is a system of special signs and rules for their combination. In addition to internal content, language signs also have an external form - sound and written.

A child begins language acquisition by mastering the sound form of expression of a linguistic sign.

The patterns of formation of the phonetic side of speech in the ontogenesis of speech activity have been the subject of research by many authors: R. M. Boskis, A. N. Gvozdeva, G. A. Kashe, F. A. Pay, E. M. Vereshchagina, D. Slobina, etc. The data from these studies are summarized and analyzed in the works of domestic psycholinguists: A. A. Leontyev, A. M. Shakhnarovich, V. M. Belyanin and others. Let us point out some of these patterns.

Mastering the articulation of speech sounds is a very difficult task, and although a child begins to “practice” pronouncing sounds from the age of one and a half to two months, it takes him three to four years to master speech pronunciation skills. All normally developing children have a certain sequence in mastering the sound form of language and in the development of pre-speech reactions: humming, “pipe”, babbling and its “complicated version” - the so-called. modulated babble (17"4, 193,240).

The child is born, and he marks his appearance with a cry. A cry is a child's first vocal reaction. Both the cry and the crying of a child activate the activity of the articulatory, vocal, and respiratory parts of the speech apparatus.

For a child of the first year of life, “speech training” in pronouncing sounds is a kind of game, an involuntary action that gives the child pleasure. A child can stubbornly repeat the same sound for many minutes and thus practice articulating it.

The period of walking is observed in all children. Already at 1.5 months, and then at 2-3 months, the child exhibits vocal reactions in the reproduction of sounds such as a-a-bm-bm, blb, u-gu, boo, etc. It is these that later become the basis for the development of articulate speech. Humming (according to its phonetic characteristics) is the same among all children of the world.

At 4 months, sound combinations become more complex: new ones appear, such as gn-agn, la-ala, rn, etc. In the process of humming, the child seems to be playing with his articulatory apparatus, repeating the same sound several times, while enjoying it . A child gurgles when he is dry, well-rested, fed and healthy. If one of the relatives is nearby and begins to “talk” to the baby, he listens to the sounds with pleasure and seems to “pick up” them. Against the background of such positive emotional contact, the baby begins to imitate adults and tries to diversify his voice with expressive intonation.

To develop the skills of walking, teachers recommend to parents the so-called “visual communication”, during which the child peers at the adult’s facial expressions and tries to reproduce them. The famous Russian teacher O.I. Tikheyeva (1936) compares a child during the revelry period with a musician tuning his instrument*. In most cases, at the first manifestations of humming, his parents begin to talk to the baby. The child picks up the sounds he hears from the speech of adults and repeats them. In turn, the adult repeats the child’s “speech” reactions. Such mutual imitation contributes to the rapid development of increasingly complex pre-speech reactions of the child. Pre-speech reactions, as a rule, do not develop well enough in cases where, although the child is being trained, he cannot hear himself or the adult. For example, if there is loud music in the room, adults are talking to each other, or other children are making noise, the child will very soon fall silent. There is one more important condition for the normal development of pre-speech reactions: the child must clearly see the face of an adult, the movements of the organs of articulation of the person talking to him are accessible to perception.

According to a number of experimental studies (257, 347, 348, etc.), by the age of 6 months, the sounds pronounced by children begin to resemble the sounds of their native language. This was tested in the following psycholinguistic experiment. The subjects, who were native speakers of different languages ​​(English, German, Spanish, Chinese), were presented with tape recordings of screaming, humming, “piping” and babbling of children brought up in the corresponding language environments. Only when listening to tape recordings of six-seven-month-old children were subjects able to recognize with a high degree of reliability the sounds of their native language (347, 348).

During the period of humming (voice-modulated pronunciation of individual sounds, corresponding in their characteristics to vowels), the sound side of children's speech is devoid of four important features inherent in speech sounds: a) correlation; b) “fixed” localization (“stable” articulation); c) constancy of articulatory positions (there is a large and largely random “scatter” of articulations); d) relevance, i.e. the correspondence of these articulations to the orthoepic (phonetic) norms of the native language (139, 348).

Only during the period of babbling (which is expressed in the pronunciation of combinations of sounds corresponding to a syllable and the production of syllable series of different volume and structure) these normative features of sound pronunciation gradually begin to appear. During this period, a “syntagmatic organization” of speech takes shape: the “structure” of a syllable is formed (the appearance of a “proto-consonant” and a “proto-vowel”), the division of the flow of speech into syllabic quanta is noted, which indicates the formation of a physiological mechanism of syllable formation in the child.

After 2-3 months, the child’s speech manifestations acquire a new “quality”. A unique equivalent of a word appears, namely a closed sequence of syllables, united by accentuation, melody and unity of articulatory organs. These structurally organized sound products (so-called pseudowords), as a rule, are “trochaic”: “words” have stress on the first “syllable”, regardless of the characteristics of the child’s native language. Pseudowords do not yet have an objective reference (the first and main component of the meaning of a full-fledged word) and serve exclusively to express one or another “vital” need or a not yet fully realized “evaluative” attitude towards the outside world. “But this is enough for the sounds to have constancy, so that a certain pseudo-word is assigned to the expression of a certain function (a typical example is [n"a] as a reaction to feeding and a signal of hunger).”

With normal child development, “booming” at 6-7 months gradually turns into babbling. At this time, children pronounce syllables like ba-ba, dy-dya, de-da, etc., relating them to certain people around them. In the process of communicating with adults, the child gradually tries to imitate intonation, tempo, rhythm, melody, and also reproduce series of syllables; The volume of babbling words that the child tries to repeat after adults expands.

At 8.5-9 months, babbling already has a modulated character with a variety of intonations. But this process is not unambiguous in all children: with a decrease in auditory function, humming “fades out”, and this is often a diagnostic symptom (193, 242, etc.).

At the age of nine to ten months, a qualitative leap occurs in the child’s speech development. The first “normative”, subject-related words (corresponding to the lexical system of a given language) appear. The range of articulations does not expand within two to three months, just as there is no attribution of sounds to new objects or phenomena: at the same time, the identity of the use of a pseudo-word (more precisely, a “proto-word”) is ensured not only and not so much by the identity of articulation, but by the identity of the sound appearance of the whole words. At the age of 10-12 months, the child uses all nouns (which are practically the only part of speech represented in the child’s “grammar”) in the nominative case in the singular. Attempts to connect two words into a phrase (Mom, give me!) appear later (at about one and a half years). Then the imperative mood of verbs is acquired (Go, go! Give, give/). It is traditionally believed that when plural forms appear, mastery of grammar begins. Depending on individual differences in the pace of psychophysical and cognitive development, all children - progress differently in their language development.

The “suspension” of phonetic development during this period of “speech ontogenesis” (for a period of 3-4 months) is associated with a significant increase in the number of words in the active vocabulary and, what is especially important, with the appearance of the first real generalizations, although corresponding, according to the concept of L.S. Vygotsky, “the syncretic coupling of objects according to random characteristics” (50). A linguistic sign appears in the child’s speech. The word begins to act as a structural unit of language and speech. “If earlier individual pseudowords arose against the background of semantically and articulatory undifferentiated babbling “speech,” now all of the child’s speech becomes verbal” (139, p. 177).

A child’s assimilation of the sequence of sounds in a word is the result of the development of a system of conditioned connections. The child imitatively borrows certain sound combinations (pronunciation options) from the speech of the people around him. At the same time, mastering language as an integral system of signs, the child masters sounds immediately as phonemes. For example, the phoneme [r] can be pronounced by a child in different ways - in the normative version, in a grazing manner, or in a burr (velar and uvular variant of rhotacism). But in the Russian language, these differences are not significant for communication, because they do not lead to the formation of words with different meanings or different forms of words. Despite the fact that the child does not yet pay attention to the various variants of pronunciation of phonemes, he quickly grasps the essential features of the sounds of his language.

According to a number of studies, phonemic hearing is formed at a very early age (119, 174, 192, etc.). First, the child learns to separate the sounds of the surrounding world (the creaking of a door, the sound of rain, the meowing of a cat) from the sounds of speech addressed to him. The child actively searches for sound designations of elements of the surrounding world, catching them from the lips of adults (192, 242, etc.). However, he uses the phonetic means of the language borrowed from adults “in his own way.” It can be assumed that children use their “strictly ordered system” (139). According to the observations of the American researcher of children's speech E. Velten, the child uses his own principle of contrasting voiceless and voiced consonants: at the beginning of a word only voiced consonants b and d are pronounced, and at the end only voiceless consonants - tmp. This means that for a child at this stage of development there are only two classes of consonant phonemes. This is a principle that does not exist in adult language, but it is also a kind of “sound model” for pronouncing a word (347).

The presence of such patterns allows us to say that the child, in the process of language acquisition, creates his own intermediate language system. Subsequently, sonority (determined by the sonority of the voice) becomes a contrasting differential feature of speech sound, which will allow the child to double his supply of consonant classes. A child is not able to borrow such a rule from adults. The reason is not that the child does not know how to pronounce, say, the sound [d] - he knows how to pronounce it, but believes that this sound can only appear at the beginning of a word. Later, this “system of rules” is corrected, and the child “brings” it to the adult language system (193, 240). When it comes to the phonetic side of speech, it is clear that a child does not even need to be able to pronounce a sound in order to adequately perceive its differential features. This is illustrated by the following example of a dialogue between an adult and a child:

What's your name, girl?

Raspberries. (That is, Marina).

No, Malina.

Well, I say - Raspberry!

Raspberry, Raspberry!

Oh, so your name is Marina?

Yes, Malina!

From the above example it is clear that a child who cannot pronounce the sound [p] adequately differentiates it from the oppositional sound. Therefore, he rejects adult imitation of his pronunciation, although he himself cannot yet express this difference in his pronunciation.

Based on the above, we can conclude that first the child masters the purely external (i.e., sound) structure of the sign, which subsequently, in the process of operating with signs, leads the child to its correct functional use. In general, we can talk about the formation of the articulatory apparatus only when the child reaches five or six years of age (193, 242).

During the period of initial language acquisition, the volume of babbling and full-meaning words in the child’s active vocabulary expands. This stage is characterized by the child’s increased attention to the speech of others, and his speech activity noticeably increases. The words used by the child are most often “multi-meaning”, “semantically polyphonic”; At the same time, using the same word or combination, the child denotes several concepts: “bang” - fell, lies, stumbled; “give” - give, bring, give; “bibi” - walks, lies, rides, car, plane, bicycle.

After one and a half years, children’s active vocabulary grows; the first sentences appear, consisting of whole words and amorphous root words. For example:

Papa, di ("Papa, go").

Ma, yes myasi (“Mom, give me the ball”).

Pedagogical observations show that children do not immediately master the correct reproduction of language signs: some language phenomena are acquired earlier, others later. The simpler a word is in sound and structure, the easier it is for a child to remember. During this period, a combination of the following factors plays a particularly important role:

a) imitation (reproduction) of the speech of others;

b) the formation of a complex system of functional (psychophysiological) mechanisms that ensure the implementation of speech;

c) the conditions in which the child is raised (psychological situation in the family, attentive attitude towards the child, a full-fledged speech environment, sufficient communication with adults).

Analyzing the quantitative indicators of the growth of children's vocabulary during this period, we can cite the following data from pedagogical observations and psychological and pedagogical research: at one and a half years, the volume of children's vocabulary is 30-50 words, by the end of the second year - 80-100 words, by three years - approximately 300-400 words (57, 130, 193, etc.)

A characteristic indicator of the active speech development of children at this stage is also their gradual assimilation of grammatical categories.

During this period, we can distinguish a separate “substage of “physiological agrammatism,” when the child uses sentences in communication without the appropriate grammatical design of their constituent words and phrases: Mama, dai kuka (“Mom, gimme a doll”); Vanya no tina (“Vanya doesn’t have a car”). With normal speech development, this period lasts from several months to six months (57, 139, etc.)

In the pre-preschool period of speech development, children exhibit a variety of phonetic disorders: they skip many sounds of their native language (do not pronounce them at all), rearrange them, and replace them with simpler ones in articulation. These speech defects (defined by the concept of “physiological dyslalia”) are explained by age-related imperfections of the articulatory apparatus, as well as an insufficient level of development of phonemic perception (perception and differentiation of phonemes). At the same time, characteristic of this period is the children’s fairly confident reproduction of the intonation-rhythmic, melodic contours of words, for example: kasyanav (cosmonaut), piyamidkya (pyramid), itaya (guitar), kameika (bench), etc.

N. S. Zhukova notes that a qualitative leap in the development of a child’s speech occurs from the moment he becomes able to correctly construct simple sentences and change words by cases, numbers, persons and tenses (85). By the end of the preschool period, children communicate with each other and others using the structure of a simple common sentence, while using the simplest grammatical categories of speech.

Parents and educators should be informed that the most favorable and intensive period in the development of a child’s speech falls in the first 3 years of life. It is during this period that all functions of the central nervous system, ensuring the formation of a system of conditioned reflex connections that underlie the gradually developing speech and language skills, are most easily amenable to targeted pedagogical influence. If development conditions at this time are unfavorable, then the formation of speech activity may be delayed or even proceed in a “distorted” form (174, 240).

Many parents evaluate their child’s speech development only by the degree of correct sound pronunciation. This approach is erroneous, since an indicator of the development of children's speech is the timely development in the child of the ability to use his vocabulary in verbal communication with others, in different sentence structures. By the age of 2.5-3 years, children use three- to four-word sentences using various grammatical forms (go - go - let's go - don't go; doll - doll - doll).

The preschool stage of “speech ontogenesis” is characterized by the most intensive speech development of children. There is often a qualitative leap in the expansion of vocabulary. The child begins to actively use all parts of speech; Word formation skills are gradually formed in the structure of the language ability that develops during this period.

The process of language acquisition proceeds so dynamically that after 3 years, children with a good level of speech development communicate freely not only using grammatically correct simple sentences, but also some types of complex sentences; speech utterances are already constructed using conjunctions and allied words (so that, because, if, that... which, etc.):

Today we will go for a walk in the area, because it is warm outside and there is no rain.

We will all turn into icicles if an evil and angry wind blows.

At this time, the active vocabulary of children reaches 3-4 thousand words, a more differentiated use of words is formed in accordance with their meanings; children master the skills of inflection and word formation.

In the preschool period, there is a fairly active development of the phonetic side of speech, children master the ability to reproduce words of different syllabic structure and sound content. If individual errors are noted, they occur, as a rule, in the words that are most difficult to reproduce, rarely used, or are unfamiliar to children. In this case, it is enough to correct the child just 1-2 times, give an example of correct pronunciation and organize a little “speech practice” in the normative pronunciation of the word, and the child will quickly introduce this new word into his independent speech.

The developing skill of speech-auditory perception helps you control your own pronunciation and hear errors in the speech of others. During this period, children develop a “sense of language” (an intuitive feeling for the linguistic norm of using a sign), which ensures the correct use of all grammatical categories and forms of words in independent statements. As T. B. Filicheva notes, “...If at this age a child allows persistent agrammatism (I play batik - I play with my brother; my mother was in the store - I was in the store with my mother; the ball fell and then - the ball fell from the table, etc.) etc.), abbreviations and rearrangements of syllables and sounds, likening syllables, their replacement and omission - this is an important and convincing symptom, indicating a pronounced underdevelopment of speech function. Such children need systematic speech therapy sessions before they enter school” (174, p. 23).

By the end of the preschool period of development of speech activity, children normally master developed phrasal speech, phonetically, lexically and grammatically correct. Deviations from the orthoepic norms of oral speech (individual phonetic and “grammatical” errors) do not have a persistent, fixed character and, with appropriate pedagogical “adjustment” from adults, are quickly eliminated.

A sufficient level of development of phonemic hearing allows children to master the skills of sound analysis and synthesis, which is a necessary condition for mastering literacy during school.

Analysis of the formation of various aspects of speech activity in children from the standpoint of psychology and psycholinguistics is directly related to the problem of the development of coherent speech during preschool childhood. In the preschool period, the child’s speech as a means of communication with adults and other children is directly related to a specific visual communication situation. Carrying out in a dialogical form, it has a pronounced situational (determined by the situation of verbal communication) character. With the transition to preschool age, the emergence of new types of activities, new relationships with adults, differentiation of functions and forms of speech occurs. The child develops a form of speech-message in the form of a story-monologue about what happened to him outside of direct contact with an adult. With the development of independent practical activity, the child develops a need to formulate his own plan, to reason about the method of performing practical actions (279). There is a need for speech that is understandable from the speech context itself - coherent contextual speech. The transition to this form of speech is determined, first of all, by the acquisition of grammatical forms of detailed statements. At the same time, there is a further complication of the dialogic form of speech, both in terms of its content and in terms of the child’s increased linguistic capabilities, activity and the degree of his participation in the process of Live speech communication.

Issues of the formation of coherent monologue speech of preschool children with normal speech development are considered in the works of L. P. Fedorenko, T. A. Ladyzhenskaya, M. S. Lavrik and others (116, 166, etc.). Researchers have noted that elements of monologue speech appear in the utterances of typically developing children as early as 2–3 years of age (116, 162, 166, 271). From the age of 5-6 years, the child begins to intensively master monologue speech, since by this time the process of phonemic development of speech is completed and children mainly acquire the morphological, grammatical and syntactic structure of their native language (A. N. Gvozdev, G. A. Fomicheva, V. K. Lotarev, O. S. Ushakova, etc.). In older preschool age, the situational speech characteristic of younger preschoolers noticeably decreases. Already from the age of 4, children become available to such types of monologue speech as description (a simple description of an object) and narration, and at the 7th year of life - short reasoning (85, 190, 240). The statements of children aged 5-6 years are already quite common and informative; they contain a certain logic of presentation. Often elements of fantasy appear in their stories, a desire to invent episodes that have not yet occurred in their life experience (59, 247, 263, etc.).

However, children’s full mastery of monologue speech skills is possible only under conditions of targeted training. Necessary conditions for the successful mastery of monologue speech include the formation of special motives, the need for the use of monologue statements; formation of various types of control

and self-control, mastering the appropriate syntactic means of constructing a detailed message (N. A. Golovan, M. S. Lavrik, L. P. Fedorenko, I. A. Zimnyaya, etc.). Mastering monologue speech and constructing detailed coherent statements becomes possible with the emergence of regulating, planning functions of speech (L. S. Vygotsky, A. R. Luria, A. K. Markova, etc.). Research by a number of authors has shown that children of senior preschool age are able to master the skills of planning monologue statements (L. R. Golubeva, N. A. Orlanova, I. B. Slita, etc.) This, in turn, is largely determined by the gradual formation of internal child's speech. According to A. A. Lyublinskaya (162) and other authors, the transition from external “egocentric” speech to internal speech normally occurs by 4-5 years of age.

Forming the skills of constructing coherent, detailed statements requires the use of all speech and cognitive capabilities of children, while simultaneously contributing to their improvement. It should be noted that mastering coherent speech is possible only if there is a certain level of development of vocabulary and grammatical structure of speech. Therefore, speech work on the development of lexical and grammatical language skills should also be aimed at solving the problems of forming a child’s coherent speech. Many researchers emphasize the importance of working on sentences of various structures for the development of a child’s coherent, expanded speech (A. G. Zikeev, K. V. Komarov, L. P. Fedorenko, etc.).

As A. N. Gvozdev emphasized (57), by the age of seven, a child masters speech as a full-fledged means of communication (provided the speech apparatus is intact, if there are no deviations in mental and intellectual development, if the child is brought up in a normal speech and social environment).

During the school period of speech development, the improvement of coherent speech continues. Children consciously learn the grammatical rules for the design of free statements and fully master sound analysis and synthesis. At this stage, written speech is formed (160, 161, 163, 221, 288, etc.).

There is a large number of experimental materials on this issue, covered in sufficient detail and fully in the works of X. and E. Clark (297) and the monograph by Carol Chomsky (296). No less interesting materials on the development of speech of children and adolescents during schooling are presented in the studies of X. Grimm (307) and M. R. Lvov (160, 161, etc.), although they have not yet received sufficient coverage in psycholinguistics.

The development of a child’s speech is a complex, diverse and rather lengthy process. Children do not immediately master the lexico-grammatical structure, inflections, word formation, sound pronunciation and syllabic structure. Some groups of linguistic signs are acquired earlier, others much later. Therefore, at various stages of development of children's speech, some elements of the language are already mastered, while others are only partially mastered. At the same time, the assimilation of the phonetic structure of speech is closely related to the general progressive progress of the formation of the lexical and grammatical structure of the native language.