Peculiarities of Сhildren’s Adaptation to the Systematic Educational Activity in Different age Groups

Abstract

Background. The assessment of the intellectual development and the hygienic estimation of adaptation have been conducted among the primary schoolchildren of the city of Lviv in connection with the age of starting their education (6 and 7 years old) on the basis of attention and general emotional state estimation by means of the complex test of school-related anxiety that included a number of parameters (the frustration of the need to succeed, the fear of self-ex-pression, the fear of the situation of knowledge testing, the low physiologic stress resilience and issues of fear in the pupil-teacher relationships). Materials and methods. 200 pupils were involved in testing the attention and intellectual development parameters. The estimation of school-related anxiety was done on the basis of tests in which 150 primary schoolchildren took part. Results. According to the results of the intellectual development estimation of the children it has been determined that the number of children with the average intellectual development was higher among the children that started school at the age of 7 (74.5 versus 60.0 % in the younger age group); the number of children with the level of the intellectual development was lower in the older age group (10.9 % versus 14.7 % respectively). The study of attention switching as an ability to get oriented fast in a complex situation and to solve complicated tasks has demonstrated that, according to this parameter, the level of the psychological development of 7 year-olds was higher than their 6 year-old classmates. The reliable difference of the level of school-related anxiety parameters among the studied children of both age groups has shown the more adequate course of adaptation of those pupils who started school education at the age of 7. Conclusion. The obtained results have determined the necessity of the optimization of the course of adaptation of younger pupils to the systematic school activity, especially the 6-year olds, on the basis of psycho-physiological functions and psycho-emotional monitoring status as the objective characteristics of the formation and condition of adaptation.