THE CLINICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN—CHILD-OLIGOPHRENICS
This chapter focuses on the peculiarities of the higher nervous activity of mentally retarded children. It discusses its distinctive features and reveal what has been found out about these children from clinical study. Most mentally retarded children who are directed to special schools are known in clinics as “child-oligophrenics.” These children have suffered from a serious brain disease either while in the uterus or during early childhood, and this has changed the brain tissue and disrupted the higher nervous processes. Typical in these children is a disruption of general mental development, which has become anomalous and has prevented the children from mastering complex forms, of cognitive activity connected with abstraction and generalization. The chapter presents the basic details that characterize the mental activity of the oligophrenic, his behavior, and his cognitive processes.