Formation of Logical Thinking in Senior Preschool Children with Severe Speech Disorders from the Standpoint of the L.M. Vekker’s Information Theory of Mental Development

Introduction
According to various authors, the number of speech disorders in preschool children in the Russian Federation ranges from 5.5 to 55.5% [Nol’d, 2020]. The large data spread can be explained by the difference in the criteria used by the authors when taking into account speech pathology. So, for example, a violation of the pronunciation side of speech in a preschool child, according to the Scientific Research Institute of Hygiene and Health Protection of Children and Adolescents, occurs in 52.5% of cases, and general speech underdevelopment - in only 5.4% of cases [Nol’d, 2020]. Thus, the more severe the speech disorder, the lower the percentage of children with this type of developmental disorder. Severe speech disorders are often accompanied by cognitive development delays, behavioral disorders, and emotional problems [Feldman, 2019; Jin, 2023; Larson, 2023]. When speech disorders are combined with intellectual disabilities, learning decreases, and difficulties arise in mastering educational material at school [Semenova, 2021]. Due to the mosaic formation of mental operations that ensure verbal and logical thinking, children face difficulties in solving simple mathematical problems, operating with logical and grammatical structures, constructing statements, and formulating conclusions [Nol’d, 2020].
Often, speech and intelligence disorders may have one common cause - organic disorders that lead to violations of sensorimotor functions and, as a result, to violations of tactile functions and low processing speed of sensory information [Tseng, 2023]. These disorders, on the one hand, inhibit the onset of oral speech, on the other hand, inhibits the development of mental operations. The study of the connection of thought processes with social cognition in children with speech disorders shows that insufficient development of thought processes delays the social development of the child [Karpenko, 2022; Oesch, 2024]. In particular, it turned out that people with intellectual disabilities compete much worse with people with normal intelligence, even in those activities in which they have no deviations from the norm [Sakalidis, 2023]. Hence, it can be concluded that the timely development of intellectual operations in a child should not only increase his learning ability at school, but also affect the effectiveness of social adaptation. At the same time, given that the same brain structures are responsible for logical conclusions and speech behavior, the development of conceptual thinking and logical operations is also simultaneously a process of development of lexical and grammatical structures of speech [Oesch, 2024]. This is confirmed in studies that have revealed that the development of cognitive processes, combined with the development of speech skills in preschool age in children with intellectual disabilities, leads to the fact that such children, in the future, do well at school, achieve academic and non-academic achievements, feel confident in social relations [Nursanti, 2022; Park, 2021]. Since children with speech disorders often suffer from basic cognitive functions, such as tactile perception, sensorimotor coordination. nonverbal memory, the development of verbal and logical thinking, is impossible without the development of lower levels of thinking (visually effective and visually figurative). These types of thinking are the basis for the formation of verbal and logical thinking [Beloshistaya, 2019]. Studies show that children with speech pathology have difficulty performing tasks to divide a complex picture into parts, they cannot distinguish individual components of a complex image. In general, the thinking of children with speech underdevelopment is characterized by concreteness, infantilism and stereotyping. When completing tasks, children are easily distracted, miss essential points, and cannot adequately assess the situation [Davydova, 2022; Karpenko, 2022].
In the process of correctional and developmental learning, most often, each cognitive process is isolated and formed separately, and the continuity and general patterns of their formation are not always taken into account [Novak, 2019; Nol’d, 2020]. Meanwhile, in L.M. Vekker's information theory, the development of the human cognitive sphere is considered as a single process that naturally reflects the child's transition from sensory-perceptual processes to abstract logical, verbal thinking [Vekker, 1998]. An underestimation of continuity in the development of cognitive processes and general patterns can lead to unjustified intellectual delays and a slowdown in the rate of development of the child's psyche.
The purpose of the study
The aim of the study was to develop psychological and pedagogical conditions for the development of verbal and logical thinking in children with severe speech disorders. The psychological and pedagogical conditions were planned to be developed taking into account the information theory of the development of the psyche by L.M. Vekker. Based on these conditions, an experimental program was created for the development of verbal and logical thinking.

Research materials and methods
The methodology of working with children with severe speech disorders was developed on the basis of L.M. Vekker's information theory of mental development. L.M. Vekker considered mental processes as a system of receiving and processing information from the outside world to control human behavior and activity. He believed that the basis of the interaction of the psyche with the outside world is the ability of the psyche to create models of this world. The author also adhered to the idea of active reflection, which allowed the psyche to improve, creating increasingly complex models that reflect the essential properties of surrounding objects and phenomena. In the process of creating increasingly complex models of the surrounding reality, the psyche itself is being improved, gradually moving from simple sensory sensations to the creation of perceptual images and image-representations. The result of the cognitive development of the psyche are complex spatial and temporal models-concepts that are the basis of human conceptual thinking [2, pp. 102-103]. The process of mental complication is continuous and only artificially can separate stages and levels of development be distinguished in it. Already in perceptual images, some mental operations can be detected: the abstraction operation is performed when separating the image of a figure from the background, the analysis operation is performed when selecting individual parts of a perceived object, the synthesis operation is performed when creating an integral image of an object. Such qualities as generality and mediation can be found in image representations, although they have traditionally been attributed only to thought processes [Vekker, 1998, p. 89]. This means that different forms of mental reflection can perform the same functions: orientation in the environment and management of behavior and activities on this basis. Simpler forms of reflection cope worse with the tasks of orientation and foresight of the future, more complex ones do it much more effectively. Thus, by helping a child to create and assimilate new forms of reality modeling, teachers and psychologists can develop his psyche. Substitute objects, drawings, graphic schemes, signs, and finally, speech and language can act as such models. This means that there are many possibilities to encode sensory information coming from the outside and, if necessary, if it is impossible to fully use the speech system, other coding and modeling methods available to the child can be used. In this case, the authors used this pattern to work on the development of logical thinking in children with severe speech disorders. It was taken into account that children with this pathology suffer from phonetics, pronunciation, lexical and grammatical structures of speech [Davydova, 2022]. Therefore, the emphasis was placed on sensory perception, the creation of kinetic (motor) images that generically reflect the spatial-temporal relationship between phenomena and objects. Such generalized, symbolic actions are the basis for creating visual images, image-representations. In further work, kinetic images can be translated into visual images: drawings and diagrams. When a child becomes able to reproduce speech methods of encoding information, verbal designations and descriptions are added to such visual-figurative, graphical models. That is, the introduction of iconic ways of encoding information for a long time should be combined with visual, graphical models.
The structural unit of logical thinking is judgment. A judgment is a statement or denial expressed in speech form about objects, phenomena, and relationships of the surrounding world. Predicates of judgments are the designation of objects, objects of varying degrees of generality. The judgment can be about a specific object, or about an abstract concept, or its properties.
An essential condition for the development of thinking is the use of semantic context, which is formed in a specific problem situation. A problematic situation sets the direction of mental behavior, helps to determine the purpose of the thought process. Due to the semantic context, the child can correlate the images and models that arise in him with the desired results of thinking, for example, finding adequate means of solving a problem situation [2 p. 125]. Thus, a problematic situation triggers the mechanisms of emotional and motivational regulation of behavior. Therefore, the child begins to perceive mental tasks not as abstract activities, but as interesting situations in which the characters of short stories or fairy tales find themselves who need help.
Thus, on the basis of L.M. Vekker's information theory of mental development, the main psychological and pedagogical conditions for the formation of logical thinking in children with severe speech disorders were formulated:
1. Modeling of surrounding objects, phenomena, relationships, and processes has become the main tool for the development of a child's cognitive processes. Models of varying degrees of complexity were used, from simple kinetic models to complex speech and sign models.
2. Determining the sequence of introducing models of different levels of concretization and on different materials: from concrete object models to kinetic (motor) models, then to drawing and graphic ones. Then sign and speech models are introduced.
3. The condition for starting mental behavior in a child was the creation of problematic situations in which objects of the surrounding world are considered as subjects of fantasy. a fabulous relationship. The problem is most often presented to children as a social conflict between objects (operands). The resolution of such a conflict can occur by finding the necessary action (operator) that resolves the conflict between the specified objects (or their images). Thus, the comparison operation is considered as a search for similar or different features in different objects, a generalization operation, as a grouping of objects based on a similar (family) feature, an abstraction operation, as a selection of one property against the background of all others and a search for objects with the same property. All this can be considered in situations of searching and discovering objects-friends and objects-enemies, collecting objects into a common family, comparing and identifying objects-relatives, determining which property is the main one, what is the cause and what is the consequence. In the course of working with the child, he also developed the ability to use inferences and convey these mental operations in speech form.
The objectives of the program are the formation of mental operations: analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, classification, abstraction, concretization, actions by analogy and establishment of cause-and-effect relationships.
Based on the developed psychological and pedagogical conditions, a program for the formation of logical thinking in children with severe speech disorders was created. The program included 26 classes, which were conducted in a subgroup form (6 people each). Each lesson lasted 30 minutes. Group and individual forms of work on assignments were used.
The program was tested on the basis of the Municipal preschool educational institution "Kindergarten No. 150" in Yaroslavl in 2023 (October-December). The study involved 18 children from 6 to 7 years old. Of these, 9 people had severe speech disorders (level 3 ONR).and 9 children were without developmental disorders. To diagnose the level of development of mental operations in the subjects, the "Methods of studying the level of readiness of children to study at school" by L.A. Yasyukova were used. The level of development of the following mental operations was measured: speech analysis-synthesis, speech analogies, speech classifications, visual analysis-synthesis, abstract thinking, antonyms. The comparison between children with and without speech impairments was carried out using the U-Manny-Whitney statistical criterion. A comparison between the indicators of the development of logical operations in a group of children with speech disorders before and after the program was carried out using the T-Wilcoxon criterion.

A comparison of the indicators of logical thinking in children with speech disorders and without speech disorders showed that significant differences were found in the following mental operations: speech and visual classifications, abstract thinking (see Table 1)

Indicator	The average values of children with TNR*	Average values of children without disabilities	The average value U emp.
Speech analysis-synthesis	2,4	3,0	23
Speech analogies	1,4	2,6	23,5
Speech classifications	2,1	3,4	11,5**
Visualan alysis-synthesis	1,4	1,9	30,5
Visual classifications	2,2	3,6	8**
Abstractthinking	1,8	3,0	9**
Antonyms	1,2	1,8	29

Note: ^*TNR- severe speech disorders
^**U emp.<U cr_.(p≤0.01)

The indicator "speech classifications" indicates a low level of children with speech disorders to select a generalizing word and select words from the same categorical group.
The indicator "visual classifications" indicates a low level of the ability of children with speech disorders to identify common visual signs in the objects depicted in the picture, to combine objects on a common basis.
The indicator "abstract thinking" shows the weak ability of children with speech disorders to correlate the numerical value and the number of objects drawn, to highlight the number of letters in a word and abstract from the meaning of this word, to find the functional meaning of objects and search for objects that are opposite in functional meaning.
The reasons for these features, in addition to the low level of development of mental operations, were: a small lexical stock that does not allow finding a word from the same categorical group and a generalization word, as well as a low ability to draw conclusions and convey causal relationships in speech form.
After the experimental program, a re-diagnosis of children with severe speech disorders was carried out. The results of the statistical comparison are shown in Table 2.

Indicator	The average value for children with TNR* at the beginning of work	The average value for children with TNR* at the end of work	The average value Т emp.
Speechanalysis-synthesis	2,4	3,3	6**
Speechanalogies	1,4	3,2	1***
Speechclassifications	2,1	3,2	3***
Visualanalysis-synthesis	1,4	2,8	3***
Visualclassifications	2,2	3,4	3***
Abstractthinking	1,8	2,4	10
Antonyms	1,2	2,0	6**

Note: ^*TNR- severe speech disorders ^**Тemp.<Тcr._. (p≤0.05) ^***Т emp.<Тcr._. (p≤0.01)

The results of the study showed that changes in the level of development of mental operations in children with speech disorders occurred in all compared indicators. A significant shift was observed in the following mental operations: speech analysis-synthesis, speech analogies, speech classifications, visual analysis-synthesis, visual classifications, antonyms. Only in terms of abstract thinking, the differences between the indicators did not reach a criterion value.
Thus, the program of work with children with speech disorders has shown its effectiveness, and the psychological and pedagogical conditions have shown their effectiveness. In the future, it is planned to introduce children to different types of judgments and conclusions, replenish their speech stock, and teach them to convey different types of relationships in speech: equivalence, intersection, subordination, subordination, opposites, contradictions.

Thus, the selected psychological and pedagogical conditions and the experimental program created on their basis have shown their effectiveness. L.M. Vekker's theory proved useful for creating the following psychological and pedagogical conditions:

1. Using the modeling method as the main tool for the development of logical thinking.
2. The need to begin the development of logical thinking on the subject-effective material, gradually moving to more general and abstract forms of modeling relations between objects and objects of the surrounding world.
3. The condition for starting mental behavior in a child was the creation of problematic situations in which objects of the surrounding world are considered as subjects of fantasy. a fabulous relationship. The problem is most often presented to children as a social conflict between objects (operands). The resolution of such a conflict can occur by finding the necessary action (operator) that resolves the conflict between the specified objects (or their images).