Abstract:

The scientific and teaching discipline, which involves educational and formative methods applied in special and normal schools, psychomotor skills is a component of integrative and compensating therapy and holds significant weight in the curriculum of preschool and elementary education. Psychomotor education, according to R. Zazzo, refers to having “knowledge over one’s own body, lateral dominance, to have spatial orientation, to have balance and coordination of own movements” Also, it influences the entire school learning process and the adaptation process in many areas such as: personal care and hygiene, social and family integration, health and safety or work related abilities.

Authors who researched psychomotor skills agree that the body scheme, global or segmental, and laterality are part. The outcome in teaching psychomotor skills shows a more balanced psychological and physical coordination facilitating social behavior skills having a significant role in the special needs education program. Recognizing body segments, their presence and their relation to spatial orientation, the size of the segments and the proportion with one another were of high interest during this research.

The purpose of this research was to develop the psychomotor skills indicators related to the laterality and the body scheme. The overall objective of the research was to get acquainted with parts of the body, and the segments of it. The research method used was through analyzing the results from the experiment conducted with the help of the group of children with special needs - CES- between October 2018 and November 2019. For the body scheme evaluation we applied the Goodenough test variable with 27 elements of criteria.

The results of the research highlighted differences between the scores obtained by the study subjects, because results are based on their abilities in other aspects such as, playing in front of the mirror, shaping activities, human body assembly, communication, graphical and spatial awareness. These aspects, made the recorded progress initially to not be relative to the final one, also the low number of children making it one of the research limit and only partially confirming the hypothesis.

Keywords:

Children with special needs, body scheme, laterality.