Abstract
Nowadays, there are numerous scientific reviews and studies devoted to the problem of psychomotor retardation of children of different ages. Though, a comprehensive solution of how to identify psychophysical characteristics demonstrated by this category of small children suffering from postural disorders has not made yet. The goal of our research was to identify features of the mental and motility state of small children suffering from psychomotor retardation and postural disorders. Summarising the research performed, these conclusions have been made: The children demonstrating psychomotor retardation have different types of mental and somatic dysontogenesis, which negatively affects their academic performance and social adaptation; in the process of pedagogical observations, the small children suffering from psychomotor retardation and postural disorders demonstrate certain mental features in comparison with their healthy as follows: reduced motor-game activity, reduced participation as a leader in collective active games; lack of speech communication with peers, emotional instability, the children constituting this category fail to respond to changes in plot collisions of a game in time, in contradistinction to their healthy peers; their responses happen to be inadequate; they do not understand the rules of a game, or details of the game plot; do not always respond correctly to the results of the game commented by their teacher in each particular case; this category of children demonstrates specific peculiarities of their motor development: a reduced total volume of their daily locomotion compared to their healthy peers; these children prefer horizontal basic motor modes (lying, crawling, sitting), avoiding vertical gravitational starting positions; in case these children take vertical positions, they reflexively try to find additional support for the upper extremities or corpora; a reduced amount of purposeful motor-game actions with increased spontaneous motor activities; the movements of the children suffering from psychomotor retardation and postural disorders are often insufficiently coordinated by them; the problems causing fusion of movements should also be noted; insufficient rationality of motor actions performed by these children according to all the parameters (space-, time- and energy-related) is revealed. The prospects of further research in this area are seen in the study of physical, psycho-somatic and mental relationships alongside their impact on the overall development of small children suffering from mental retardation and postural disorders.