Mediation of a Teenager’s Experiencing as Predictor of Emotional Self-Regulation of Adolescents with Developmental Delay

Abstract

The problem of the development of emotional self-regulation as a process of becoming an independent experiencing in its cultural sign-symbolic mediation is discussed. The results of the study are presented: the process of becoming an independent experience in adolescents with developmental delay. The sample consisted of 42 normotypic adolescents and 25 adolescents with developmental delay. Methods: psychodiagnostic – drawing “My emotional state”, author's questionnaire, composition “The meaning of music in my life”; methods of qualitative data analysis: methods of grounded theory, content analysis. Methods of mathematical statistics: frequency analysis, criterion – Fisher angular transformation. A generalizing conclusion is made that the mediation of the experience of a teenager with developmental delay is largely difficult. Music plays the role of “activation” – strengthening the actual state of a teenager, but the experiencing remains incomplete, since there is only saturation of the immediate bodily-perceived level of it. Low cognitive and reflexive abilities of adolescents with developmental delay do not allow using an artistic image as a means-incentive for “mastering oneself”.