Diagnostics of social self with younger schoolchildren with intellectual disabilities
Authors: Kuzmina T. I. 
Published: December 2019

Introduction. The article presents a fragment of a comprehensive study of the formation of the self-concept of people of different ages with intellectual disabilities, dedicated to the study of the social self with younger pupils with mild mental retardation. The questions of diagnostics and qualitative analysis of the state of this structurally-substantial component of the self-concept are highlighted. Structuring the self-conceptual components of the personality is of great importance for the formation of the skills of dialogical interaction with others in a younger student with intellectual disabilities and develops the ability to adapt among peers with subsequent integration into society. In younger students with mental retardation, a violation of the formation of self-image due to intellectual underdevelopment is the basis for the complications of social interaction that arise as a result, and the inability to independently overcome these difficulties entails maladjustment and early-occurring asociality in behavior. It is difficult for a child with intellectual impairment to enter into dialogical relationships with the outside world, the ability to which is an essential characteristic of a person to form adaptive behavior. The behavioral manifestations of a primary school pupils with mild mental retardation in some cases are not conscious, impulsive, reactive, uncontrolled. And in this case, attention is drawn to the qualitative originality of the personal characteristics of such children and the specifics of the formation of their self-consciousness as a regulator of social behavior.

Materials and methods. An anamnestic data analysis was used, a structured conversation, as well as a diagnostic complex, which included several proprietary techniques developed to study the social self with individuals having mild mental retardation. The study of the expected attitude from the representatives of the immediate environment was carried out using the “Balls” methodology, the determination of the attitude to the representatives of the nearest environment was carried out using the «Ladder» methodology. The study of the expected attitude from representatives of the immediate environment and the child’s own attitude to them in the structure of the Self-social is a modification of the method of «Unfinished sentences» - «Finish the sentence». The «You have to be like this» methodology was used to diagnose elements of social longevity of a prescriptive nature, irrespective of a personally attractive prototype.

Results. The article presents the methods and results of studying the social self component with primary school pupils having mental retardation. We study the child’s expected attitude from representatives of the immediate environment and their own attitude to them, socially desirable qualities (according to the child) and the norms of social dignity learned by children. The experiment involved 53 children with mild mental retardation (F 70 according to ICD-10). Participants in the study were divided into groups: depending on the residence / non-residence of the child in a boarding school and the form of education that children receive. Three groups were formed: children receiving differential education, living in a boarding school (31 people) group A; children receiving differentiated education, daily coming to school (9 people) group B; children studying in an inclusive class (13 people) group C. To perform, the children were offered a diagnostic complex, developed taking into account the intellectual and linguistic capabilities of the subjects of diagnosis, which includes several interconnected methods that imply a qualitatively-quantitative assessment, taking into account the main criteria for the diagnosis of the mental sphere of persons with intellectual impairment. An experimental study showed that the self-social component in the structure of the self-concept at the stage of primary school age has a distinctive quality. The level of fulfillment of the tasks of the diagnostic program by children with a mild degree of mental retardation is not uniform. Most of the tasks are carried out at a high and medium level, when respondents understand the instructions, accept the experimenter's small organizing help, adequately answer the questions posed, and often give not only standardized, but also spontaneous answers. This fact is in favor of the relevance of the proposed methods to diagnostic research tasks of studying the self-conceptual components of the self-consciousness of children with impaired intelligence. If the task is performed below the average level, the low marks received by the children are associated not so much with a lack of understanding of the instruction as with a low motivation for the diagnostic procedure. Minimum, maximum, average values and the total distribution of points received by children of groups A, B, C for completing tasks in the Self-social study do not differ significantly, which is confirmed statistically when calculating the non-parametric Mann – Whitney statistic for unrelated samples. Thus, the self-social component  with  children having  impaired intelligence of primary school age is relatively formed. The qualitative specificity of this component of the self-concept at this age stage is its predominantly positive orientation in terms of the child’s expected relationship from representatives of the immediate environment and his own positive attitude towards them. Marked significance for a child with a mental retardation of his personality and activity assessments from his immediate environment and especially significant adults is noted. In children receiving differentiated and inclusive education, Self-social structurally and substantively differ little, with the exception of certain points due to the specifics of these forms of education and the organization of interaction of children in a “barrier-free” peer environment.

Discussion and conclusions. The study demonstrated the presence of specific structurally-meaningful manifestations of the self-social component of elementary schoolchildren with mild mental retardation. As a result of the study of the relationship expected by children with mental retardation from representatives of the immediate environment, a positive trend was revealed in the development trends of this aspect of the formation of the social self. The positive orientation of the expected relationship is associated with the child’s own positive attitude towards significant others, and is often associated not with the child’s assessment of the real state of things and actions of individuals, but with the high significance of these representatives for the child himself, the ability to communicate with them, the child’s need for affiliation, acceptance and proximity. At the same time, fragmentation in the evaluation of the semantic content of the concepts “friend”, “acquaintance”, “friend”, “significant person” from the point of view of closeness and trust to the subject falling into this inner circle can negatively affect the social and behavioral implementation of primary school students with mental retardation. The generalization by children with mental retardation of individual frustration experiences and experiences of failure / dissatisfaction with needs and the occurrence in some separate cases of social interaction, transferring them to the general expected attitude from representatives of the immediate and near environment can be the basis for the formation of pathological characteristics of the person at the stage of adolescence based on emancipation or implementation of protest reactions in the context of a general destabilization of behavior. The idealization of antisocial parental prototypes and pronounced uncriticality to the actual behavior of loved ones can become the basis for the subsequent copying of variants of antisocial behavior at later age stages.