Experience of Mental States in Children with Health Disabilities

Abstract

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The subjective experience of mental states has a specific structure determined by various factors: age, sex, social conditions, personal and characterological traits, etc. The ability to understand emotions, person’s own mental states and mental states of other people is realized if the person has a rich experience of emotions, feelings and mental states. The development of this ability leads to positive social and interpersonal interactions. Children with disabilities have a weakly developed emotional-volitional sphere but they have qualitative features in emotional development. The article describes the specificity of the subjective experience of children’s mental states (7-10 years old) and adolescents (13-14 years old) with limited possibilities of health: severe speech disorders (SSD) and cerebral palsy (CP). Such mental states joy, anger, calmness were studied in the article. Content analysis of self-reports allowed to single out semantic units related to different categories. Children and adolescents with SSD and CP describe their mental states experienced in the past through the causes of the states, through external markers – for example, communication and unity with relatives and important people. Their subjective experience reflects such characteristics of mental states as behavior, reactions, and types of activities. Their experience also includes internal markers related to the world of their feelings and experiences, evaluative judgments and reflections, elements of regulation and problem-solving. The study discovered the specificity of the subjective experience of mental states depending on the age and type of disorder.