Lecture
At the turn of the century, exceptionally favorable conditions took shape for the establishment of speech therapy as an independent science of disorders
of speech, of the methods for their prevention, detection and elimination by means
of special instruction and education. The manifestation of interest in the study of the pathology of speech and voice was fostered above all by society's increased socio-economic needs for «speech» professions,
as well as by a change in the style of thinking in science (a shift from appearance to reality). This was considerably aided also by the active development of the sciences of hu19
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man - anatomy, physiology, clinical medicine, etc. - in the depths
of which knowledge about the pathology of speech and voice accumulated.
The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, in most Western European countries,
were the period of the establishment and development of speech therapy as an independent
science of speech pathology (with its own object, subject, and methods) and of its acquisition of official status. An interdisciplinary
approach to the study of speech disorders took shape, which made it possible to draw on data from many human sciences. Many researchers developed
etiopathogenetic, systemic methods of overcoming speech pathologies; special pedagogical methods appeared which, above all, took into account the role of psychological and social factors in the process
of preventing and overcoming various forms of speech disorders.
Scientific-theoretical and experimental works by specialists of various profiles - neuropathologists, psychiatrists, otolaryngologists, physiologists, psychologists, linguists, and educators - contributed
to the opening of special institutions whose goal was the comprehensive
study of speech disorders and the provision of assistance to people with various forms of speech pathology.
In 1929, L.S. Vygotsky defined defectology as an independent science possessing its own object of study and distinct from other sciences. Like V.P. Kashchenko and G.Ya. Troshin, L.S. Vygotsky
believed that the guiding orientation for the educator and for the psychologist should be the preserved and potential capacities of the child. Vygotsky emphasized
that the task of the auxiliary school did not consist in «treating» the defect,
but in developing those healthy strata present in every child with
one or another developmental disorder, since the defect itself is either little or
not at all amenable to medical and pedagogical intervention.
In the 1930s-1940s, a new scientific direction in psychology took shape - neuropsychology - the founder of which became a student
of L.S. Vygotsky - Alexander Romanovich Luria (1902-1977). He developed the theory of the systemic dynamic localization of higher mental
functions, which made it possible to understand the influence of local brain lesions on the emergence of disorders of intellectual activity, memory, speech, and movement control. Thanks to the research of A.R. Luria in
the field of neurolinguistics, significant progress was achieved in domestic speech therapy, namely in aphasiology.
Knowledge, vast practical experience, and an experimental approach,
together with devotion to her work, enabled N.A. Rau, in the first decades of the 20th century,
to create a system of preschool education for the deaf that was modern for its time. Its main ideas are set out in the monograph «Preschool Education
of the Deaf-Mute» (1947). Through the whole of her work, N.A. Rau demonstrated the enormous importance of early pedagogical assistance to a deaf child and of the development
of oral speech and residual hearing in the child. N.A. Rau did everything possible to promote
the establishment and development of the system of preschool education for deaf children
in the USSR; to N.A. Rau and F.A. Rau belongs the initiative of opening a circle
for lip-reading for hard-of-hearing adults (1922). A prominent place in
the Leningrad scientific school of deaf pedagogy and speech therapy of the Soviet
period belongs to Mikhail Efimovich Khvattsev (1883-1977).
It is precisely to him that the priority belongs in creating the practical foundations
of domestic speech therapy as a pedagogical science, in introducing a staff position of speech therapist in polyclinics, and in opening speech-therapy centers at
general-education schools throughout the country, as well as in establishing wide-ranging
international ties with scholars of Western Europe.
M.E. Khvattsev was the first to divide the causes of speech disorders into
external and internal, particularly emphasizing their close interaction, and identified organic (anatomical-physiological), functional (psychogenic), socio-psychological, and psychoneurological causes.
The establishment of domestic speech therapy at the end of the 19th and in the first quarter of the 20th century was aided by the methodology formed by I.P. Pavlov and
Sechenov. The «reflex methodology» proposed by them contributed
to the establishment and development of the scientific-materialist foundation of speech therapy as
a scientific discipline.
Speech activity was regarded at that time by researchers
in the field of speech therapy as a set of complex reflex movements of the speech organs, organized in a particular way. Such a point
of view persisted until the mid-1930s.
Scholars increasingly turned to research on speech disorders in children (G.Ya. Troshin, M.V. Bogdanov-Berezovsky, G.D. Netkachev, M.V. Aderkas, and others). One of the first domestic publications on this problem, addressing an analysis of the problem of tongue-tiedness, was the work of S.M. Dobrogaev, «Burring Speech, Its Origin and Treatment» (1922).
During this period, both researchers and practicing speech therapists distinguished three main forms of speech disorders in children: tongue-tiedness, stuttering, and a combined form, i.e., a combination of tongue-tiedness and stuttering. These groups
as it were combined within themselves almost all the nosological types
of speech disorders then known - alalia, dysarthria, stuttering, rhinolalia, hearing impairment,
deafness, mental retardation, and several others. Later, on the basis
of this grouping, a medical (clinical) classification of speech disorders in children was developed. The development of experimental pedagogy and psychology also influenced the establishment of speech therapy - a significant
place in speech-therapy research began to be occupied by the experiment.
It was precisely during this period that speech therapy acquired the status of an independent
science having its own scientific-theoretical foundations. New methods of correcting speech disorders, as A.V. Bezlyudova notes, increasingly
became etiopathogenetic, systemic, and complex methods.
At the same time, symptomatological, mechanical methods continued
to remain in force until the end of the 1930s. Both in research and in the correction
of speech disorders, pedagogical methods began to be used to an ever greater extent.
However, the process of changing the methodology and methods of studying and correcting
speech disorders developed rather slowly. In the first half
of the 1930s, as I.T. Vlasenko points out, «...the content and tasks of speech therapy...
were exhausted by the development and use of a technically complex system of training techniques aimed at correcting the «reflex-associative mechanisms» of oral speech - the pronunciation of sounds, syllables,
phrases, and speech breathing. Various speech defects were presented, as
a rule, as isolated symptoms, independent in origin, unconnected with one another or with speech activity as such».
The beginning of a new stage in the development of speech therapy was laid in the following years, when the reflexological approach to the analysis of speech disorders in children was, in principle, revised,
and new conceptions appeared in psychology and pathopsychology concerning the systemic, mediated
structure of higher human mental functions, their social conditioning, and their formation over the course of life. The works of L.S. Vygotsky
contributed to the consolidation of ideas about the systemic character of the emergence and development of primary and secondary defects in children with developmental disorders. His ideas about the dynamic localization of higher
mental functions in the cerebral cortex determined the formation of the modern scientific foundations of neuropsychology and speech therapy.
Research in psychology and linguistics made it possible to oppose to the symptomatic, reflexological approach a new vision
of speech activity as a complex, systemic, functional unity, the component parts of which (phonetics, vocabulary, grammar) in the process of dysontogenesis regularly depend on one another, forming and
conditioning one another. The development of this new concept belongs above all to Rakhil Markovna Boskis (1902-1996) and Rozalia Evgenievna Levina (1908-1989) - «The Theory of Acoustic Agnosia» (1936).
In addition, R.E. Levina carried out a systemic psychological analysis of the disturbance of phonemic representations and various aspects of oral
speech, writing, and reading, and of «linguistic awareness» in children with normal intelligence and hearing, which served as a significant contribution to the development of domestic speech therapy and psychology. As a result of this research, it proved possible to isolate primary and secondary (systemic) speech defects that differ in structure and pathopsychological nature
from one another. To R.E. Levina belongs the development of an original, scientifically and practically grounded
typology of non-speaking children in accordance with the form of «predominant
insufficiency», which made it possible to substantiate the need for a differentiated approach to the study and corrective instruction of children
with speech disorders. Psychological-pedagogical recommendations were prepared for individual work with children; for practicing speech therapists
and teachers, a methodological manual, «A Collection of Speech Games» (1941), was published,
by T.I. Kupriyanova, R.E. Levina, O.V. Pravdina, and N.S. Samoilenko.
The rich experience of providing multifaceted speech-therapy and deaf-speech-therapy assistance during wartime significantly enriched speech therapy
in scientific terms, especially in the field of the study of aphasias and of corrective
intervention in these forms of disorder.
Thanks to the research of M.S. Pevzner and G.E. Sukhareva, a scientifically grounded systematics and classification of oligophrenia was developed,
which summarized the results of many years of clinical study of mentally
retarded children.
The subject of profound scientific interest for defectologists also became
children with combined disorders of vision, hearing, and intellectual insufficiency (I.A. Sokolyansky, A.I. Meshcheryakov, M.S. Pevzner, A.V. Apraushev, and others).
Of great importance for the development of speech therapy were the clinical studies of N.N. Traugott (1904-1994), devoted to the study of the physiology
of higher nervous activity in various speech pathologies (alalia,
aphasia and deafness in children, aphasia in adults), which she conducted over the course of several decades.
The clinical-physiological aspects of the problem of cerebral palsy were studied by
O.F. Arkhipov, O. Badalyan, E.M. Mastyukova, M.S. Pevzner, L.I. Peresleni, K.A. Semyonova, M.B. Eidinova, and others. Especially significant during the period under consideration was the contribution to the development of theoretical and practical
aspects of the problem of the clinical and pedagogical study of cerebral palsy, made by Margarita Vasilyevna Ippolitova and Elena Mikhailovna
Mastyukova. At the Institute of Defectology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, a consul
tative intake of children of this category was carried out for special schools engaged in their education; educational and corrective programs were created,
original methodological developments were tested, and
methodological recommendations were drawn up, and didactic aids were produced.
No less significant and wide-ranging are the results of the scientific activity
of another Soviet psychologist - Zhozefina Ilyinichna Shif (1904-1978).
Most of her research was devoted to studying the psychological peculiarities of the development of thinking and of verbal-speech language (as opposed to sign language) in deaf children. A prominent specialist in the field
of the psychology of mentally retarded children was Susanna Yakovlevna Rubinstein (1921-1990), one of the founders of experimental pathopsychology and a student of A.R. Luria. Further development was achieved by the scientific and methodological direction connected with the formation and development of oral
speech in deaf children (V.I. Beltyukov, K.A. Volkova, L.V. Neiman, F.F. Rau,
N.F. Slezina, and others). With the name of Grigory Mitrofanovich Dulnev (1909
-1972), head of the sector (department) of auxiliary schools at the Institute
of Defectology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, is connected the development of many theoretical and
practical problems of oligophrenopedagogy, including the selection of pupils for auxiliary schools, and the content, methods, and organization
of corrective-educational work with mentally retarded children,
as well as the formation of the personality of such a child. Domestic speech therapy during the period under consideration is characterized by the development of a scientifically grounded
approach to uncovering the patterns of development of speech activity
in children of different age groups. Research by domestic specialists in the field of speech therapy made it possible to uncover the mechanisms of interaction
between disorders of auditory perception and speech-motor function,
between articulatory activity and phoneme formation, and between
disorders of oral and written speech. An interdependence was established between disorders of the sound and the meaning-bearing side of speech, and the complex and diverse content of the mental processes participating
in the formation of speech activity was revealed. Speech-therapy research set itself the goal of clarifying the particularities of the influence of disorders
of speech on a child's acquisition of their native language; a constant search was conducted
for ways and means of preventing school underachievement caused by the presence of speech disorders in the child.
In the 1950s-1960s, a mass psychological-pedagogical and
speech-therapy study was conducted of pupils in the primary grades of general-education schools who exhibited isolated and general disorders of the phonetic-phonemic and lexical-grammatical spheres of speech
activity. In this research, the methodological principles of analyzing speech disorders proposed by R.E. Levina in the 1930s and
1950s received their in-depth development and practical implementation: the principle of the development
of the defective function; the principle of a systemic approach; and the principle of the interconnection of disordered speech
with other developing mental processes. The materials of this
research were reflected in the works of many authors: R.E. Levina
(1958, 1959, 1960, 1961); N.A. Nikashina (1959, 1961); L.F. Spirova,
R.I. Shuifer (1962); G.A. Kashe (1961, 1962); L.M. Chudinova (1956, 1961);
G.I. Zharenkova (1957, 1961); A.V. Yastrebova (1962), N.A. Cheveleva
(1962), and others. The results of this research confirmed the existence of an interconnection between various speech and non-speech processes; they showed that, alongside pronunciation defects, children also exhibited deficiencies in the sound analysis of words and specific errors in writing, and
other systemic disorders.
New methods began to be widely introduced into speech-therapy practice
for overcoming and preventing pronunciation disorders, based on
the systemic correction of the pronunciation side of speech, which made it possible to achieve a positive corrective effect in overcoming «hidden» and overt secondary defects. This, in turn, ensured the formation in children of psychological structural-dynamic mechanisms
an inner readiness to successfully master one's native language, which helped overcome academic underachievement and ensured successful schooling.
During this period, two classifications were used in Russian speech therapy: the psychological typology of R.E. Levina and the «working» clinical
classification of O.V. Pravdina (1958), and S.S. Lyapidevsky and B.M. Grinshpun (1969).
In the 1960s-70s, research identified and described types of speech anomalies in children of both school and preschool
age, and an analysis was conducted of impairments in children's mastery of various
components of the language system, and the systemic properties were studied in depth
of lexical, grammatical, and syntactic disorders, and of defects of writing and reading depending on the degree of phonetic-phonemic deficiency and changes in the sound and syllabic structure
of words in children with various forms of speech disorders. Thanks to the work of leading Russian scholars in the field of speech therapy, ideas
about the subject, principles, and methods of speech therapy were refined and enriched
(R.E. Levina, 1968, 1975, 1979; L.F. Spirova, 1968; G.V. Chirkina, 1967,
1972; A.V. Yastrebova, 1968; I.K. Kolpovskaya, 1965, 1970; N.S. Zhukova,
E.M. Mastyukova, T.B. Filicheva, 1973, and others).
Of great importance for the practical work of speech therapists was the pedagogical classification of children with speech disorders, presented
by R.E. Levina, which provided for a methodologically unified form of special frontal instruction for children with various speech disorders,
who had normal hearing and primarily intact intellectual development potential. This classification was largely based on the theoretical propositions of linguistics concerning the systemic structure of language as a universal means of communication, and on L.S. Vygotsky's ideas about inner speech and
its regulatory function in relation to external speech. In the 1970s, a new aspect of speech-therapy theory and practice became the development
and organization of special schools for children with severe
speech disorders, and the scientific grounding of the correctional-pedagogical process. Whereas earlier speech therapy had mainly dealt with developing technical methods for correcting oral speech (pronunciation,
speech breathing, tempo and rhythm of speech), now, based on a new understanding of the essence of the speech defect, different avenues of
correctional-pedagogical assistance were used. Previously, individual manifestations
of speech disorders were regarded as independent defects
with heterogeneous pathogenesis, whereas according to the new understanding of the essence of the defect, a systemic approach began to prevail
both in diagnosis and in correctional intervention. Scholars substantiated the systemic nature of speech disorders and their interconnection and interaction. Connections were also
established between the lexical, grammatical, and phonetic
aspects of speech activity, and a certain correspondence was found between deviations in the development of children's speech and psyche.
The theoretical positions developed served as scientific grounding for the differential diagnosis of speech disorders in childhood
and for the principles of analyzing disorders and identifying characteristic levels of speech underdevelopment. All this strengthened the scientific basis of the correctional-pedagogical process in schools for children with severe
speech disorders.
During the period under consideration, Russian scientific schools of speech therapy continued to develop: the Leningrad school (M.E. Khvattsev,
E.S. Ivanov, L.S. Volkova, G.A. Volkova, V.A. Kovshikov, R.I. Lalaeva,
V.I. Lipakova, L.G. Paramonova, and others) and the Moscow school (L.I. Belyakova,
I.T. Vlasenko, B.M. Grinshpun, R.E. Levina, S.S. Lyapidevsky, E.M. Mastyukova, Yu.B. Nekrasova, O.V. Pravdina, V.I. Seliverstov, I.N. Sadovnikova, O.A. Tokareva, T.B. Filicheva, G.V. Chirkina, S.N. Shakhovskaya,
V.M. Shklovsky, and others).
Fundamental research in speech therapy is being conducted both within the research structure (the Institute of Defectology of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences), and
within the system of the country's higher education institutions - at the departments of speech therapy
of the Lenin Moscow State Pedagogical Institute and the Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute.
Larisa Stepanovna Volkova worked on identifying the features
and correction pathways for systemic speech disorders in children with impairments of sensory, intellectual, and motor development, which made it possible to deeply reveal the features of the mechanisms and structure of complex
speech disorders and the dynamics of their manifestations, and to begin developing
comprehensive methods of correctional-pedagogical intervention. As early as
the late 1950s of the past century, a system of speech-therapy assistance for adolescents and adults suffering from
stuttering became widely developed. In 1957-1959, Viktor Markovich Shklovsky (the Clinical
Psychoneurological Association named after Academician I.P. Pavlov) developed a comprehensive system of medical and pedagogical measures for people
with this form of speech disorder. By the early 1990s, Russian special pedagogy had turned into a dynamically developing branch
of scientific-practical knowledge within the structure of pedagogy. Russian defectology scholars highly valued the significance of the period described (the second
half of the 20th century) for the development of special pedagogy, calling it the «golden age of Soviet defectology». Already by the end of the 1980s, the scientific-pedagogical community of defectologists had begun to recognize the need for change, for a shift in priorities in special education: from a predominant focus on achieving standard-level education toward
an ever fuller awareness of the significance of the real needs of the child
with disabilities, the necessity of early detection of developmental disorders, the provision of timely comprehensive assistance, and the creation of living and educational conditions that would, to the greatest
extent, help this particular child - not some average one - in development, socialization, and self-realization in life.
The study of foreign experience helped reveal that full social integration is unthinkable without the earliest possible comprehensive
assistance to children with disabilities, without the early integration
of such a child into the surrounding environment, including the educational environment of typically developing children.
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