Issues of self-regulation of children with mental retardation

Abstract

Matured self-regulation system is considered to be one of the crucial factors for the success in life and that explains the interest to this issue from researchers, belonging to varied psychological disciplines.

According to the Nikolaeva's (1991) model, self-regulation system consists of three levels: the level of self-regulation of mental states, the level of activity self-regulation and the motivational level.

The research aim was to describe maturing of self-regulation of children with mental retardation comparing with their normally developing peers.

The sample consisted of 39 children with the slightest degree of mental retardation in the age from 7 to 10 years, attending public school, and of 59 their normally developing peers.

The research methods included the Luria's neuropsychological test battery, adapted by Semenovitch (2008) for the first level of self-regulation, analysis of school results for the second level and Guinsburg's and Louskanova's tests of learning motivation for the third one.

According to the test results all the subjects were referred as having high, medium and low degree of self-regulation. All the children with mental retardation had the low degree.

The research shown that for normally developing children the defects of the first self-regulation level were compensated by maturing of the third one. As for the children with mental retardation, they had more severe defects in the first level, and maturing of the third level also delayed, so there was no compensation of their problems. That fact should be considered when working out intervention program for those children.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.