Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology of the Organs of Hearing, Vision, and Speech - A.G. Shvetsov 2006

Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology of Speech
Speech as the Basis of Thought

Speech is integrated into a child's cognitive development at a very early stage. In children During the first years of life, speech exerts a significant influence on The Development of sensation and perception, facilitating The formation of thought. In adults, speech is involved, in one way or another, in all mental processes, cognitive activities, thinking, memory, and so on.

It is well known that children with speech impairments may experience delayed intellectual development. Researchers assert that speech disorders (including general speech underdevelopment) occur much more frequently in children with developmental delays or intellectual disabilities than in those with typical intelligence. Consequently, the CNS plays a crucial role in a child's speech development.

On the other hand, children with general speech underdevelopment often exhibit deviations in the development of their mental Functions: a slower rate of mental development, impaired gnostic cognitive processes, abnormal Development of the emotional-volitional sphere, character, and sometimes the personality as a whole. Therefore, it is customary to consider speech deficiency in close connection with the characteristics of a child's mental development.

In 1982, the scientist R. Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize for research showing that the left hemisphere cortex is responsible for verbal operations and speech. This means that left-hemisphere structures provide the most crucial components of speech function—namely, the analytical and Abstract-logical ones. The left hemisphere is responsible for speech comprehension, the execution of language-related movements and gestures, mathematical calculations, and the interpretation of symbolic concepts. As the lexical and grammatical aspects of speech develop, the child masters cognitive operations such as comparison, analysis, and synthesis, which underlie abstract thinking.

The cortex of the right hemisphere, on the other hand, controls non-verbal functions. It governs the interpretation of visual images, spatial relationships, and object recognition, but does not allow these to be expressed in words. Additionally, the right hemisphere determines the perception of music. This functional relationship between the right and left hemispheres is established in children after the age of four; however, despite the pronounced differences in their functions, the right and left hemispheres of a healthy individual are in constant interaction. Strong associative pathways exist between them, meaning that perception, speech, and thinking are always the result of their joint activity.

The development of a child's thinking occurs on two planes—the practical, action-based plane and the verbal plane. Naturally, both of these planes interact and interpenetrate. The development of thinking on the practical plane—the increasingly rational manipulation of objects—is both a prerequisite for and a result of the development of verbal thinking; while shaping the development of verbal thinking, the child's increasingly rational practical activity is, in turn, developed under its influence. At the same time, cognitive processes initially and undoubtedly occur as subordinate components of some "practical" (in children, play-based) external activity, and only later does thinking emerge as a distinct, relatively independent, verbalized "theoretical" cognitive activity.