Look into the brain of a first grader

Alexandra Savostyanova, perhaps, is easy to imagine a positive scientist in the Soviet film: he does not drink, does not smoke, obsessed with science, sutu, dressed discreetly. Such as him should be shown to officials, so that they do not worry, what these scientists are doing there. At 31 years old (which, by Russian standards, was not just early, but very early) defended his doctoral dissertation on philosophy at St. Petersburg State University. Professor of the Department of General Informatics of the Faculty of Information Technology of NSU. He successfully worked at the institutes of Germany and Taiwan. But at the same time he does not seek to leave anywhere: he lives and works in Novosibirsk, teaches in Tomsk. Yes, and with the beauty, his wife raises three children. He does not complain about a low salary. In a word, not a person, but a dream of officials and journalists. In addition, the top of scientific work is neither in the first or the second questions about relevance. What is there in the brains of modern first -graders with an adopting to school, it is interesting to everyone.

“For some reason, we began to load more and more of us, now the first class like an institute at school,” Alla Pugacheva sang in the last century about the bitter fate of first-graders. Since then, the load on children has not become less. One of the problems is neurotization in the learning process. Neurosis is not just a fashionable word, it is functional disorders in the brain. If light neurosis can be limited to jerking eyes and light stuttering, then severe forms of neurosis can cause fatal psychosomatic diseases or increase suicidal inclinations. One of the first neurosis was explored by physiologist I.P. Pavlov. He not only studied digestive reflexes on dogs, but also developed a technique with which they can be artificially caused by a neurosis. The easiest way was the inevitable punishment for a obviously impossible task. (The dog cannot complete the task, and for failure to fulfill it will surely punish it). If the experiment seems too cruel to you, think about the fact that many of our children live in such conditions constantly. “Quite often, our education system puts forward requirements to the child that is not feasible for him. That is, the child, in principle, cannot fulfill them. In such a situation, a good teacher is forced to ignore orders from above, and the law -abiding one to bring children to neurosis. There is no more sadness in the world when children are wandering to school, ”Alexander recalls with a laugh a very bearded joke. And then, even without a hint of a smile, he adds: - When my children went to school, I was convinced from my own experience that some of the tasks issued by him is meaningless, cruel and traumatic. ”

Alexander conducted a series of experiments on the study of children's neurosis. We visited his laboratory at the Research Institute of Physiology and Fundamental Medicine with the RAMS. A massive chair in the center of the experiments rooms evokes long -forgotten associations with the dental chair of the Soviet clinic. The photographer and I share our impressions and the most delicious memories. Alexander is happy to support our game: he with a laugh demonstrates giant syringes to us. But then, obviously remembering that before him, journalists who still write what they would write, quite seriously explains: “This is to distribute the gel evenly under the hat,” and, seeing my perplexed look, continues. - And how, you thought, the potentials from the surface of the head to the sensors come? The children even liked it, ”Alexander adds soothingly and shows a shell for washing hair, just like in hairdressing. In the photographs of Alexander, really completely happy children in these same caps with wires. It was with their help that an encephalogram of 64 channels was removed in these experiments.

Most of the studies concerned attention management. Attention is not only the ability to notice the important, but also the ability to ignore the unimportant. That's just with the latter, modern first -graders have some problems. This problem is called the syndrome of children's hyperactivity: for the child, important and unimportant things are equally priority (the teacher at the board, the fallen pen and bird outside the window are equally significant). To date, in the first grades of such children from 10 to 40%. The number of hyperactive children is changing greatly from the region to the region and from school to school. Somewhere there are relatively few of them, and in some places, on the contrary, the number of children with such problems is significantly higher than average. What we are used to calling attention, in reality, consists of two systems that differ in anatomy, in neurochemistry, in the role in the regulation of behavior: involuntary (spontaneous) attention and arbitrary (controlled). Involuntary attention is turned on when we are faced with unusual events (with elephants on the street or director of the school, proudly sitting in his office in a mantle with stars and in a cap). This is due to this, mainly with the parietal bark.
Arbitrary attention works when we need to find specific information in a large array of events, and it is mainly associated with the central area of ​​the frontal bark. The first glimpses of controlled attention can be seen in children 5-6 years old, and this system fully begins to function in most children aged 8-9 years. It depends on the individual genetic characteristics of the child, diseases, relationships in the family, education in kindergarten, etc. Some children show the ability to manage their attention already from the age of 5, but for most it is still formed by the end of the first grade of the school.

The whole system of our education is configured precisely for the last, arbitrary, system. How does the first grade begin? "They sat down exactly, hands on the desk in front of you, do not spin, listen to the teacher." That is, the child is extremely turned off the involuntary system and include the system that is still poorly developed in his age. If you ask us to fly up, at least a couple of centimeters, it will probably be equivalent to what the teacher requires from the child. Here is the time to recall the unfortunate Pavlovsk dogs and neurosis ... In recent years, schools have been trying to introduce teaching methods based on the use of involuntary attention. However, the process of their implementation is slow.

The group of Alexandra Savostyanova used the ODD-Ball technique to study attention: the children were given two close ones in tonality, one had to be ignored, and having heard the second, put pressure on the button. The desired signal is supplied with a probability of 20%, unnecessary - with a probability of 80%.

For research, Savostyanov took sounds of 1000 Hz and 500 Hz. “Of the 250 adults on whom we tested the task, 248 people successfully coped with it. Of the 76 first -graders who only came to school, only 17 people were able to distinguish sounds. To control the children, they gave a similar task with the sounds of "meow" and "kva". Everyone coped. That is, children who have only come to school do not distinguish tones. 80% of children at the beginning of schooling do not have monophonetic hearing. ” It would seem that it's okay-well, they do not distinguish the tones, to write, read it, because it does not interfere. “We have only a few ways to manifest emotions,” Alexander does not agree. - facial expressions, gestures, behavior or tonality of the voice. In our pedagogical culture, it is not customary to wave your hands or actively use facial expressions. Only tonality remains. And 80% of first -graders are not distinguished. That is, a child who has such a rumor has not yet been developed, having come to first grade, distinguishes between the emotions of loved ones, and the intonations of the teacher’s voice remain impenetrable for him. Such a child can not always understand whether the teacher encourages his behavior or does not approve, which causes severe stress. You can notice that the percentage of children who can distinguish tones grows quite quickly during the first school year. If at the beginning of the school year, about 20% of children distinguishes sounds, then by the end of the year there are already about 70%. Apparently, this is due to the fact that at the age of 8-9 years, children's brain is most often able to adapt to stressful loads, and learn how to find a way out of unpleasant situations. Unfortunately, children who are not able to distinguish between intonations of voice and facial expression even after a few years of study at school are found. As a matter of fact, it is they who make up the risk group on the development of neurotic diseases. One of the main causes of suicide in adolescents is that some of them cannot achieve an understanding of others. Such adolescents are often not able to adequately evaluate the emotions of the interlocutor and express their own emotions. A similar problem arises for autism, which most often has genetic causes. We are trying to find out what kind of reasons cause a violation of the process of social adaptation in various cases. ”

The second side of the experiment is to look at how children behave in conditions when they cannot work. It turned out that the behavior of the children was divided into three clear strategies: “regular” (children who tried to solve the problem, even when scientists joke: the caricature in the laboratory of Alexander (Fig. D. Gapchinsky) did not succeed), “chaotic” (the children hung up the keys randomly, as during the sound of sound and after and after), and the third group of children, who were named after them, called “Half -hakotics” used one or another strategy. It is fundamentally that the type of behavior is in no way connected with the level of intelligence. But, as it is easy to assume, regular children were more successful at school - they heard and performed the teachers' teams. In their group, the largest percentage of the correct answers was recorded, in chaotic - the smallest, respectively.

In the picture, where the activity of the brain is displayed during the experiment, regular children are “almost like people”, as Alexander jokes, their picture differs little from adults. The middle frontal cortex is excited on the target tone, and on the inappropriate - the parietal bark. This corresponds to the work of controlled attention. Chaotics have a slightly different picture. But the most interesting thing is that during the completion of a complex task with half -tones, the Brocka zone was inhibited - the area of ​​the cerebral cortex, which controls the grammatical correctness of speech, and in addition, helps to correlate its actions with a pre -prepared plan or received instructions. “It is impossible to call this pathology, if only because we had more such children. This is some age -related feature. In five -year -old children, this reaction of the brain will be observed in almost everyone without exception, and in nine -year -olds it is practically not found. But this means that such a child cannot perform too complicated instructions simply physically, due to age -related features. And under our system of education of this child, a teacher scolds, parents scold. ”

The second time the same children were examined at the end of the first grade, the third examination was recently completed. It turned out that already in the second experiment, the percentage of chaotics fell sharply. For the third time, only a few children remained chaotics. Most of them traced the causes of slow development: this was due either to the injury or with some psychological problems in the family.

Primary school teachers transition from chaotic behavior to regularly usually merit: “You see, he already listens in the lessons, already understands what they want from him. We will also work - and learn to study normally. ” But Alexander is still attributed to the teachers, or the program, or is not in a hurry to grow up.

“In our experiment, children of several gymnasiums in Novosibirsk and the experimental class of the gymnasium“ Rostock ”participated, in which the training is held according to the author’s program of V.V. Stepanova, - methodically, as a lecturer with experience, he explains. - As a result, by the end of the first grade in the second group, the percentage of chaotic children became regular than in gymnasium classes. But conclusions only about the merits of the program V.V. Stepanova would be premature. The initial ratio of chaotics and regular children in the classroom was too different. It is also difficult to say with what this is connected: perhaps, parents, feeling cognitive problems in the child, preferred to give him to the experimental class, perhaps in gymnasiums children are more prepared. Maybe they just matured, - warning my question, adds Alexander. - We need additional studies. If at the beginning of the year the experimental class was a higher percentage of chaotics, then by the end of the year the classes were equal to these percentage ratio, why-is not yet ready to answer. ”

Savostyanov tries to talk about research and their results everywhere: he spoke on local television, at the Eureka’s scientific cafe, told the Minister of Education of the Novosibirsk Region and his married, he gave more than a dozen lectures for teachers. “They listened to everything with great interest, nodded, wished for further successes, asked to keep in the know, but at the same time they really didn’t change anything in his work,” he summed up the sad result of his scientific and propaganda work.

“Your Andryusha today lay down on the desk right in the reading lesson and closed his eyes,” complains the teacher of my first-grader son. "And you?" -I ask with interest. “And I continued the lesson,” judging by tightly compressed lips, I asked the question inappropriate. I look away and examine my chaotic son, who flies with a joyful screeching for a classmate. He is not worried about reading, nor a teacher, nor randomness. “Well, let's hope that at least there are no neurosis,” I think.