OPPORTUNITIES OF APPLYING CULTURAL-HISTORICAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING AND RESEARCHING CHILDREN WITH SPEECH DISORDERS

Abstract

The article examines opportunities of applying cultural-historical approach to analyzing development of children with speech disorders in the context current problematic situation in Russian clinical child psychology. Speech disorders are widespread among children. However, most research projects conducted in this field are naturalistic and do not involve any methodological reflection about the techniques of data acquisition and about the cultural-historical conditions children with speech disorders have been developing in, mostly they do not take into consideration the cultural-historical nature of child development in general. The article provides critical analysis of long-held beliefs concerning development of children with speech disorders on the base of cultural-historical methodology. As conclusion the necessity of developing cultural-historical analysis in different ways is discussed, along with the importance of combining it with phenomenological analysis of child’s inner dialogs in the structure of self-awareness. The necessity of configuring different methodological approaches for researching special clinical-psychological aspects of this group of children is proved as well. Modern psychology requires increased integration of purely scientific and applied research. The article argues, that the cultural-historical methodology provides necessary basis for integration of purely scientific and applied research in analyzing speech disorders in clinical child psychology.