Examination of sensorydeprivation adolescents by the method "Diagnost-1M"

Анотація

Introduction. The study of the effect of sensory deprivation on the sensorimotor response by adolescents 14-17 years of age with visual and hearing impairment is considered in the article. People with visual and hearing impairments have a significant number amonge children and adolescents with developmental disabilities in Ukraine. Sensory deprivation is a long-term deprivation of a person's sensory impressions. The need for feelings and affective experiences is actualized in the context of sensory deprivation. This is realized in the form of sensory and emotional hunger. Imagination processes are activated in response to insufficiency of afferents. This has a certain effect on figurative memory. Bright, eidetic ideas emerge that are projected from the outside. These occurrences are evaluated as protective reactions (compensatory). Scientists have begun to study the sensorimotor reactions of humans to understand the mechanisms of integrative activity of the brain, the complex dynamic organization of its various structures. Scientists have actively studied the impact of sensory deprivation on the psychophysiological state of human over the last decade, but there is still no clear picture of the physical and mental state for a sensory deprived teenager.

The objective is to obtain and analyze new scientific data about the specificity of the influence of auditory and visual sensory deprivation on the sensorimotor reaction among teenagers aged 14–17.

Methods. The study was conducted among 151 teenagers aged 14-17 years. They were divided into three groups: control (healthy students), group of hearing impaired children and group of children with visual impairments. Each group was divided into two subgroups by age: 1st subgroup - students 14-15 years; 2nd subgroup - 16-17 years. Sensory motor reactions were investigated using the «Diagnost-1M» computer technique. This technique is widely tested and has been used quite successfully in many research and educational institutions to diagnose the properties of various psychophysiological functions. It is developed in the Laboratory of Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity of Human Institute of the Institute of Physiology. OO Bogomolets, NAS of Ukraine (Kyiv) by Professors M.V. Makarenko and V.S. Lyzohub.

Results. We investigated sensory-motor responses in adolescents with auditory sensory deprivation to sound stimuli. Three sounds with different tones were used: low, medium and high. Statistical analysis of the obtained data of latent periods of different sensorimotor responses in the experimental and control groups showed that, as a whole, the level of adolescents with visual sensory deprivation of both age subgroups was much higher than that of students with hearing impairment and control group.

The qualitative distribution of the surveyed children according to the levels of latent periods of simple auditory-motor reaction showed that in the group of sensory deprived persons the highest number (60%) of persons with a very long latency period (low tone) and in the control group - 37% (middle tone). Significant changes  are not observed with using  sound stimuli for adolescents of the control group, unlike the experimental group.

Improvement indicators with age have been identified. The indicators are better for the surveyed of all three groups aged 16-17 years, unlike adolescents 14-15 years.

Conclusion. During the studying of the sensorimotor reaction to the stress of varying degrees of difficulty, it was found that that latent periods of differing by the complexity visual-motor responses among children with visual impairment to the sounds are much better than among children from the control group and children with auditory sensory deprivation. This is due to the high level of spatial hearing development and well-developed auditory memory.

Sensomotor response rates were better for hearing impaired students on low-pitched sound stimuli than on high- and medium-high stimuli.

It can be concluded that with age the indicators of sensorimotor response to loads of varying degrees of complexity improve.

Assumptions can be made on the basis of the analysis of the results of the study of sensorimotor response that in the group of students with visual sensory deprivation there is a process of compensating the lost function of the visual analyzer due to auditory.