UkrainianProfessional Education

This article is devoted to the theoretical analysis of the problem of the development of mathematical concepts of older preschoolers with intellectual disabilities. The peculiarities of thinking as a cognitive process of the individual are analyzed. The basis of the thinking process is always analysis and synthesis. Analysis is a necessary condition for the scientific interpretation of facts. It requires completeness, depth and accuracy. This is the first stage of studying any phenomenon. Synthesis, as a thinking process, can occur at different levels in human activity, starting from a simple mechanical connection of parts of a whole to the creation of a scientific theory based on the generalization of individual facts and research materials. It can be carried out both on the basis of perception and on the basis of memories and ideas. Although opposite in nature, the operations of analysis and synthesis are actually closely related. The psychological features of older preschool children are analyzed. During this period of development, the child’s cognitive sphere is significantly enriched and developed; perception becomes more conscious and purposeful; voluntary and involuntary attention, the ability to analyze and the ability to reproduce what was previously learned develop; there is a transition from visual-active to visual-figurative thinking; verbal and logical thinking begins to develop; generalized ways of thinking are formed:  comparison, search for similarities, differences, classification, analysis, combination; the grammatical structure of the native language is mastered. The psychological characteristics of mathematical representations of children with intellectual disabilities are provided. Such children in older preschool age have no desire to engage in intellectual games, there is an increased interest in mobile, non-targeted games. The pace of perception is slowed down, the volume is narrow. They can hardly distinguish the main or general thing in the picture, in the text, grasping only individual parts and not understanding the internal connection between the parts, they often confuse graphically similar letters, numbers, objects. All mental operations (analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, abstraction) are not sufficiently formed. A distinctive feature of thinking is uncriticalness, the inability to independently evaluate one’s work. The methodological foundations of the empirical study of the development of mathematical concepts of older preschoolers with intellectual disabilities are substantiated. The obtained indicators of the formation of mathematical representations of older preschoolers with intellectual disabilities are experimentally analyzed; specifics of combinatorial and conceptual thinking of children with intellectual disabilities; indicators of the development of thinking operations of children of older preschool age