Unformed lateralization of the brain hemispheres regarded as a neuropsychological feature of primary school children

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify the neuropsychological features of primary school children (unformed lateralization of the brain hemispheres) that substantiate the necessity for changes in the organization of their learning process. The data of the research demonstrated the need to classify children of primary school age in accordance with the characteristics of their perception and the type of thinking. In the system of interactions between the brain hemispheres, signal systems and the type of thoughts, 7-8 year old pupils displayed the priority of reflecting the world through the first-signal system, stimulating the dominance of the activity of the right hemisphere, which determines the dominance of visual thinking. Children who are from 9 to 10 years old are characterized by the reflection through a second-signal system, a shift of the brain lateralization to the left hemisphere, and the development of abstract thinking. The results described above suggest that only at the age of 9-10, modern primary school children are ready to learn within the existing educational system; 7-8-year-old children are much worse at perceiving information transmitted through the words and are not ready for a learning pattern based on the use of abstract thinking; forced switching of children of this group from the right-hemisphere lateralization of the brain to the left-hemisphere leads to a state of hemispheric dysfunction and, as a result, to neurotic disorders. The education of primary school children must be approached in a differentiated way. The education system of 7-8 year old pupils, whose thinking needs to complete the development of visual thinking (not to leave the process incomplete) and to proceed to the formation of a second-signal system with the dominance of the left hemisphere, which determines the transition to abstract thinking, needs to be rebuilt by excluding the factors that traumatize neuro-physiological structures from it.