Features of the Creative Imagination of Primary School Age Children with Visual Impairment

The article discusses the problem of creative imagination development in children with visual impairment. The authors proceed from the position that shortcomings of sensory cognition, in particular the images of representations in the form of schematism, fragmentation, etc., affect the development of creative imagination. In the meantime, preservation of combinatorial mechanisms can be a compensatory component in the development of fantasy in visually impaired children. In modern child pathopsychology, the question of nature of impaired vision influence on the process of imagination development remains open. On the one hand, a decrease in visual acuity enhances perceptual uncertainty which can contribute to the development of imagination. On the other hand, the narrowing of sensory experience leads to irreversible underdevelopment of creative imagination. According to the authors of the article, a visual defect can have a negative impact on the imagination development, however, a corrective effect can reveal the potential opportunities realized in the zone of proximal development. The relevance and novelty of the study are due not only to the lack of scientific developments devoted to imagination in conditions of visual impairment, but also to the importance of this phenomenon in the learning process and socio-psychological integration of visually impaired people. The purpose of the study is to conduct a comparative analysis of various features of the imagination of visually impaired and normally seeing children. Sample: visually impaired students studying in a special (correctional) school for children with visual impairments and their peers who can see normally, studying in a general education school in the first grade (25 people — the experimental group, 25 people — the control group; average age is 7–8 years). The study was carried out using the technique of finishing geometric shapes (Dyachenko, Kirillova). The data obtained indicate the negative impact of visual acuity reduction on the development of creative imagination of primary school children. This applies both to quantitative and qualitative aspects of imagination images. Nevertheless, the existing potential opportunities were clearly revealed in the course of a correctional and developmental experiment.

Ananiev, B. G. (2001). On the Problems of Modern Human Knowledge. St. Petersburg, Piter Publ. (In Russian)