Formation of Attention as a Condition of Overcoming Phonemic Disorders in Children of Late Pre-School Age with General Speech Undevelopment

The paper studies characteristics of phonemic processes in children with general speech underdevelopment and their correction through the development of attention. Impairments in the discrimination of sense-distinctive characteristics of sounds(phonemes) lead to serious disorders of sound pronunciation on the background of general speech underdevelopment. These disorders complicate the formation of phonemic analysis and synthesis, as well as phonemic and morphological generalizations. A limited vocabulary and insucient understanding of meanings and grammatical categories are consequences of these disorders. The analysis of speech pathology should consider not only the structure of a speech defect, but also mental characteristics of the child. Thus, memory disorders, lack of attention, and limitations of the allocation of attention are characteristic for children with general speech underdevelopment. Working on the formation of the perception of speech sounds depends on the type of the defect. In some cases the work concentrates on the formation of phonemic perception and the development of auditory monitoring, while in other cases the challenge is the development of phonemic perception and operations of sound analysis. Sometimes the work concentrates on the formation of auditory monitoring as a conscious action. According to the authors of the article, improving phonemic awareness could be successful with the development of auditory attention, formation of skills of the recognition of non-speech sounds, discrimination of the tone, force, timbre of the voice on the material of the same sounds, words, sentences, as well as the discrimination of words similar in their sound composition, dierentiation of syllables, dierentiation of phonemes, basic skills of sound analysis. Thus, the child's literacy acquisition in school depends on the eciency of work onthe development of attention and phonemic processes in groups of speech therapy in preschool educations institutions.