Imaginative thinking formation in senior preschool children with speech disorders

Imaginative thinking is the main type of thinking in children of senior preschool age. The state of its formation largely determines the success of children in acquiring knowledge, forming skills and abilities following the Basic Component of Preschool Education, and in the future, the requirements of school curricula. The study aims to outline the results of the research on the state of formation of figurative thinking in older preschool children with speech disorders in comparison with children with typical speech development. The following methods of scientific research were used in the study: Analysis and synthesis of scientific and methodological literature on the research problem, experiment, testing, comparison, and quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experimental data. According to the results of the diagnostics carried out according to the author's methodology, which is based on a modification of the study of figurative memory, it was found that children with speech disorders have an insufficient level of figurative thinking, especially its topological, projective, ordered, and compositional substructures. These results indicate that children have difficulty creating mental images of objects or phenomena, operating with previously created and stored images, as well as analysing, synthesising, abstracting, mediating, comparing, and generalising perceived information. These difficulties are at the heart of the problems with preparation for studying at the New Ukrainian School. The practical value of the work is to inform specialists of special and inclusive preschool education institutions about the specific features of the state of formation of imaginative thinking in older preschool children with speech disorders. The results of the study can be used for the development and implementation of methods for the formation of imaginative thinking in senior preschool children with speech disorders