Identification of Violations of the Perception of Oral and Written Speech presented during the Primary Psychodiagnostics of Candidates for Service in the Penal Enforcement System and Convicts, Suspects, Accused

Gridneva Alena Andreevna ORCID: 0000-0002-5724-2639 Teacher of the Department of staff, social, psychological and educational work at Tomsk Institute for Advanced Training of Employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service 634057, Russia, Tomsk region, Tomsk, Govorova str., 10 a_mia@ngs.ru Other publications by this author

The penal enforcement system is a State institution that implements the execution of criminal penalties for socially dangerous acts that cause or create a real threat of causing significant harm to the interests of citizens protected by the state. The importance of the effectiveness of the implementation of the functions of isolating criminals from society as punishment, as well as social adaptation and rehabilitation as correction, is due to the fact that in the concepts of modern sociology, social psychology, criminology, jurisprudence, these forms of influence on offenders are considered the most effective within the framework of social security and social prevention ^[2].

Since there is a tendency of rapid change of social views and values on the surrounding reality and social structure, as well as the role of an individual in social processes is being actualized, the question of the need for a qualitative study of the personality of participants in collective relationships to supplement the existing fundamental knowledge is again acute.

The study of the personality of employees of the penal enforcement system and convicts, suspects, accused persons is of particular interest to legal psychology, deviantology, sociology, criminology, and is also a practical task of penitentiary psychologists. As the research results show ^[5], in some cases, standardized psychodiagnostic research methods do not allow making clear, reliable conclusions about the identity of employees and suspects, accused, convicted persons without using additional projective research methods and interviewing. The reason for such diagnostic inaccuracies may be errors in the perception of oral and written speech presented during the instruction of the examinee and the presentation of stimuli of diagnostic techniques.

The purpose of the study: to develop recommendations for the diagnosis of the quality of perception of oral and written speech in the framework of primary psychodiagnostics of candidates for service and newly arrived suspects, accused, convicted. Research objectives: 1) to study data on known physiological and neuropsychological syndromes of oral and written speech perception disorders; 2) to analyze existing diagnostic methods for identifying possible variants of oral and written speech perception disorders; 3) to develop recommendations for conducting primary psychodiagnostics based on combining methodological bases for diagnosing various variants of oral and written speech perception disorders.

The practical significance of the study lies in the development of recommendations for the creation of a methodology for conducting psychological diagnostics, which, subject to further successful testing without the use of additional neuropsychological diagnostic techniques, allows to identify violations of oral and written speech perception and assess the possibility of conducting reliable primary diagnostics of personality traits and psycho-emotional states of candidates for service and suspects, accused, convicted persons entering criminal institutions-executive system. The novelty of the study lies in the consideration of the problem of the reliability of the primary psychodiagnostic information received by prison psychologists from candidates for service and suspects, accused, convicted persons from the point of view of the preservation of the ability to perceive, recognize and understand oral and written speech presented during the instruction of the examinee and the presentation of stimuli of diagnostic techniques. The article provides a theoretical development of the problem under study using the methods of theoretical and comparative analysis, generalization and systematization.

Let's consider the possible causes of errors in the perception of instructions and tasks of standardized psychodiagnostic methods ^[5]. These disorders are a contraindication to service in the penal system. If disorders are detected in a convicted person (suspect, accused), then they should be recorded in the characteristic according to the results of a psychodiagnostic study, since these problems can affect the degree of adaptation to the conditions of stay in institutions.

Incomplete or unreliable receipt of information as a result of incorrect operation of visual and auditory analyzers, peripheral and subcortical levels of analyzer systems, primary cortical fieldThe perception of visual and auditory information begins with receiving information from the environment using an analyzer of the modality in question (peripheral receptors) and continues with the transmission of information along the pathways through the switching nuclei to the primary projection areas of the cortex and the secondary sensory cortex of the brain, where the interpretation of the received sensations takes place ^{[6, 7]}.

At the stage of sensation formation preceding perception as an integral process, which is conditioned by the peculiarities of attention distribution at a particular time, memory of past sensory experience and subjective attitude to what is happening, anatomical and physiological preservation of the sensory organs and pathways becomes of particular importance ^[7].

Disorders associated with damage to the peripheral and subcortical levels of the analyzer systems, the primary cortical field, manifest themselves in the form of disturbances in light perception, color perception, sensation of height, loudness, duration of sound, loss of visual fields, etc. ^{[14, 15]}. Such disorders are diagnosed by doctors and neuropsychologists. The information is reflected in personal medical documents. Since medical information is confidential and not subject to disclosure, during the initial psychodiagnostic interview of candidates for service and newly arrived suspects, accused, convicted persons, it is advisable to clarify about somatic diseases, in particular diseases of the organs of vision and hearing. In the process of conducting a clinical interview, special attention should be paid to nonverbal signs of discomfort when receiving information from a diagnostician, which is an indirect sign of a possible pathology. It is recommended to ask clarifying questions about the well-being of the subject.

Disorders of qualitative perception of visual and auditory information are associated with disturbances in the work of the central structures of the nervous system responsible for the perception of signals of visual and auditory modalities. Brain damage is diagnosed by laboratory methods in the direction of a neurologist in the presence of complaints. If the examination was not carried out for one reason or another, the psychologist conducting the initial selection of candidates for service, or the psychologist performing psychological diagnostics of newly arrived convicts, suspects, accused persons in the institution of the penal enforcement system, it is necessary to pay attention to the following signs of visual and auditory information processing disorders in order to prepare a reliable psychological conclusion and develop follow-up recommendations for the subjects.

Violation of the ability to understand the general meaning of a visually perceived object or image while preserving the ability to evaluate its individual elements (subject visual agnosia)Subject visual agnosia can manifest itself as an inability to evaluate an object as an integral object, especially when recognizing contour, crossed out, inverted and superimposed images, while receiving psychodiagnostic tasks related to the perception of images ^{[4, 9, 11]}.

For example, difficulties may arise when performing tasks of such techniques as "Raven's Progressive Matrices", "Portrait Election Method (Sondi Test)", "Associative Drawing test", "Rosenzweig Frustration Reaction Test", etc. There is no evidence that the examinee will not be able to read the text of the standardized test methodology, however, difficulties may appear when filling out the answer form presented in tabular form.

Violations are associated with damage to the lower part of the convexital cortex of the occipital and parietal parts of the brain. A sign of the presence of agnosia may be the need to involve tactile or auditory sensory systems in identifying objects ("feeling" objects) as a compensatory mechanism ^{[14, 19]}. The time thresholds for image recognition may increase, as it takes more time to perceive objects.

To diagnose objective visual agnosia , the following methods are used:

a) Poppelreiter test, in which it is necessary to recognize contoured, crossed out and superimposed, inverted images, actualizing the need to abstract from extraneous elements and recognize individual integral objects; not used if there is reliable information about cognitive impairment or poor eyesight in the subject;

b) the "Realistic Images" technique, where it is required to name the objects that the examinee recognizes, which makes it possible to assess the ability to synthesize essential features that make it possible to recognize the image;

c) the "Incomplete images" technique, in which it is required to complete the under-drawn images; unlike the previous ones, the technique is sensitive to right-hemisphere disorders.

Thus, diagnostically significant signs of the presence of objective visual agnosia may be an external manifestation of anxiety, a negative attitude to the examination situation, refusal of examination or distortions in drawings when performing tasks of projective techniques. It is advisable to clarify whether the examinee understands the instructions and whether he can formulate in his own words an algorithm for completing tasks.

Optical-spatial, color and facial agnosia3) Possible variants of visual agnosia are also optical-spatial agnosia (inability to orient oneself in spatial features of the environment and images of objects), color agnosia (inability to correlate an object and its color), simultaneous agnosia (inability to simultaneously perceive two or more images), facial agnosia (inability to recognize real faces and their images) ^{[8, 12, 14]}.

The reliability of diagnostics may decrease when using such techniques as "Lusher Color Test", "Solomin I.L. Color Metaphor Technique", "Raven Progressive Matrices", "Portrait Selection Method (Sondi Test)", "Associative Drawing test", "Rosenzweig Frustration Reaction Test", and other projective techniques that require interpretation the colors used and the location of the objects. Reliable data on the effect of these violations on the perception of written speech has not been found, so there is no reason to assert their influence on the perception of the text of the instructions and tasks of standardized test psychodiagnostic techniques.

Violation of phonemic hearing, non-discrimination of the sound composition of words (sensory or acoustic-gnostic aphasia)The disorder is associated with damage to the upper secondary areas of the temporal region of the left hemisphere (Wernicke's zone) and is expressed in the non–discrimination of phonemes similar in sound (for example, b – p, g - k) or may be associated with phonetic and phonemic underdevelopment of speech.

With complicated variants of the course of the disease, native speech is perceived as noise or as speech in another language. In addition to partial reading impairment, there is a violation of writing and paraphasia in speech (replacement of some sounds by others or one word by another) ^{[8, 14]}. Thus, when listening to instructions and tasks of psychodiagnostic techniques, the subject may hear words different from the spoken ones or not distinguish them at all, the ability to read is partially impaired.

When diagnosing sensory aphasia , it is evaluated:

a) the quality of spontaneous speech - fluency of speech, the number of words spoken, the ability to initiate speech, the presence of spontaneous errors, pauses for word selection, doubts and prosody (tone, volume, tempo, timbre of speech); it is necessary to take into account the influence of emotional state on the task, the level of cognitive development (it is necessary to exclude the presence of mental illness by studying personal file of the subject);

b) the ability to name specific objects - the ability to give objects specific commonly used names without verbose descriptions of the object (in relation to well-known concepts);

c) the ability to repeat grammatically complex phrases (for example, "no ifs, and, or buts"), taking into account the availability of reliable information about the proficiency in the language in which diagnostic measures are carried out;

d) understanding of speech addressed to the subject - the ability to point to objects called a diagnostician, execute a command in one or more actions, answer simple and complex questions "yes" or "no";

e) ability to read and write - dictation, comprehension, pronunciation when writing an arbitrary phrase and reading it.

No separate diagnostic tools are required to detect the presence of sensory aphasia. It is enough to include clarifying questions in the interview that require naming written or drawn objects, and questions containing complex logical constructions (see point "b"), as well as to use the observation method to assess the quality of spontaneous speech and identify difficulties in completing tasks.

Amnesic aphasiaAmnesic aphasia is manifested by the presence of difficulties in correlating the name of the subject with the subject itself, with knowledge of its meaning and use, as well as in violation of the volume of retention of auditory-speech information, narrowing of the volume and inhibition of auditory-speech memory.

Violations may occur as a result of local lesions of the posterior-inferior temporal cortex and parietal-occipital regions of the left hemisphere (20, 21, 37 and 40 Brodman fields). The key defects are the inferiority of auditory-speech memory, optical amnesia and agnosia (difficulties in remembering and recognizing visual images), violation of the function of naming objects. Defects appear separately and can occur independently of each other ^{[5, 13, 14]}.

a) In the presence of defects in the form of acoustic-mnestic aphasia, there is a loss of the ability to perceive an expanded text by ear and retain an auditory series of 3 or more elements in memory, which manifests itself in the inability to perceive and reproduce long and multi-stage phrases. Difficulties also cause retelling of the text, remembering proper names, geographical names, dates, phone numbers, searching for suitable words to describe thoughts. Significant in carrying out diagnostic measures is the receipt of unreliable factual information from the examinee, the distortion of personal data when using techniques containing long questions or a variety of answers. It is advisable to double-check the information on a personal matter, use simple diagnostic techniques for perception.

b) With optical-mnestic aphasia, the ability to visually recognize familiar objects is impaired, words perceived by ear do not cause visual images. The patient cannot depict objects from memory, misses significant details while preserving the ability to copy (copy) images. It may be difficult to sort items by category. The perception of the left half of the text may be impaired (violations of the type of literal, verbal or one-sided optical alexia). It is necessary to pay attention to the performance of tasks of projective diagnostic techniques.

c) Forgetting the names of objects is a defining violation for amnesic aphasia. There is an increase in the time required to answer the question, which is associated with the need to select words that match the meaning ^{[1, 13, 14]}. At the same time, reading and writing under dictation, as a rule, are preserved, spontaneous writing is distorted. There may be difficulties when writing essays and essays.

Semantic aphasiaSemantic aphasia is a violation of the understanding of complex logical and grammatical constructions describing spatial and quasi-spatial relations.

The disorder occurs when the area of the temporal-parietal-occipital junction of the left hemisphere of the brain is affected and is manifested by a violation of the understanding of semantics, complex grammatical constructions, a disorder of visual-spatial perception and, in part, purposeful actions, a violation of the ability to operate with numbers and perform counting operations. Patients experience difficulties in selecting the right word, retelling the text, understanding the meaning of prefixes and prepositions, the ability to understand metaphors, proverbs, sayings is lost, the volume of auditory-speech memory is narrowed ^{[10, 14]}. It is advisable to diagnose the presence of semantic aphasia by observing the features of expressive speech and the reaction to the testing situation (in particular, the reaction to oral instructions, tasks of methods for intelligence, projective techniques). In case of detection of signs (diagnosis) of semantic aphasia, it is recommended to diagnose personality and psychoemotional states using simple, concise methods, instructions and questions should be presented in writing.

Violations in the perception of written speech: either letters (literal optical alexia) or whole words (verbal optical alexia) are not definedOptical alexia occurs in the case of damage to the parietal-occipital and occipital parts of the left hemisphere, which leads to defects in optical analysis and synthesis of alphabetic characters.

In the case of literal optical alexia, violations manifest themselves as an inability to understand letters and words written on paper while preserving oral speech. Patients confuse letters that are similar in optical characteristics, the quality of written speech decreases. With verbal optical alexia, the ability to read all the letters in a word is preserved, but the patient cannot combine the letters into a single word - grasping its separate part (usually the root), he replaces the reading of the word with a guess about the meaning ^[14].

With optical alexia, the patient shows signs of anxiety when reading the instructions and the stimulus material of diagnostic techniques, asks to read the task by the experimenter, seeks to answer questions orally. To distinguish optical alexia from other variants of reading disorders, it is advisable to ask questions that require a detailed answer, give a task to understand metaphors and proverbs. It is also necessary to check the ability to recognize the depicted objects, since damage to the parietal-occipital and occipital parts of the left hemisphere of the brain can lead to any visual-spatial disorders, including visual hallucinations. With optical alexia, psychological diagnostics can be reliable in the case of presenting tasks and answering them orally.

Violations of the purposeful nature of reading, disconnection of attention, its pathological inertia (with frontal syndrome)Frontal syndrome is a clinical symptom complex that occurs mainly with bilateral damage to the frontal lobes of the brain.

There may be apraxic (disorder of the organization of complex movements and actions), apathetic-abusive (lack of initiative, apathy, lack of interests, desires, inability to initiate any action aimed at satisfying basic needs) symptoms, mental disinhibition syndrome (inability to regulate their behavior in accordance with social norms, possible manifestation of carelessness, increased aggressiveness). It is characterized by "getting stuck" on performing a certain action, active speech is reduced, there is no criticism of one's behavior. Often patients cannot take an object at the request of the experimenter. Psychological diagnosis in frontal syndrome is not possible. Audiovisual diagnostics can tell about the severity of violations, the reliability of the forecast of behavior in the institution is below average. Treatment by a neurologist is required.

Conclusions A decrease in the reliability of diagnostic information obtained during the initial examination of candidates for service in the penal system and newly arrived convicts, suspects, accused as a result of errors in the perception of oral and written speech presented during the instruction of the examinee and the presentation of stimuli of diagnostic techniques may manifest as:

a) disturbances in light perception, color perception, sensation of height, volume, duration of sound, loss of visual fields;

b) inability to perceive the integrity of the object while preserving the perception of its parts, the ability to combine letters into a single word;

c) inability to implement orientation in spatial features of the environment and images of objects;

d) inability to correlate an object and its color, to recognize real faces and their images;

e) inability to simultaneously perceive two or more objects presented visually and "by ear";

f) inability to recall some words and the appearance of objects, tell from memory or draw;

g) non-discrimination of phonemes close in sound, letters close in optical characteristics;

h) inability to perceive and repeat complex logical constructions, violation of understanding of complex logical and grammatical constructions describing spatial and quasi-spatial relations;

i) difficulties in correlating the name of the subject with the subject itself, with knowledge of its meaning and peculiarities of use;

k) lack of initiative, apathy, lack of motivation to undergo psychological diagnostics; inability to regulate their behavior in accordance with social norms, possible manifestation of increased aggressiveness.

When conducting an initial psychodiagnostic interview of candidates for service and newly arrived suspects, accused convicts, it is necessary:

1. to clarify about somatic diseases, in particular diseases of the organs of vision and hearing, head injuries and bruises, the presence of tumors, meningitis and hemorrhages in the brain;

2. pay attention to nonverbal signs of discomfort when receiving information from a diagnostician;

3. ask clarifying questions about the well-being of the subject;

4. record the fact of refusal of the examinee to perform the task of the diagnostician with a description of the content of the task;

5. to clarify whether the examinee can perceive the instruction and stimulus material visually without the help of a diagnostician;

6. clarify the understanding of the instructions examined, offer to explain the instructions in their own words;

7. invite the examinee to choose and take writing materials for filling out diagnostic forms with instructions describing their approximate location (for example, "Please take a pen and pencils on the table to the left of the entrance");

8. monitor the emotional state of the examinee, his motivation to perform tasks; if it is not possible to increase motivation to undergo the examination during the conversation, it is advisable to find out the causes of abusive manifestations and postpone the diagnosis or cancel the diagnosis with the preparation of a diagnostic conclusion reflecting the content of the problem;

9. include in the diagnostic form several images of famous people (for example, the President of Russia, A.S. Pushkin, Yuri Gagarin) and ask to tell a little about them, or refer to the images in the office; it is necessary to exclude mental retardation and deep pedagogical neglect;

10. use the "Associative Drawing Test" as not only a projective technique, but also as a neuropsychological technique that allows assessing the ability to holistically perceive depicted objects and reproduce objects from memory;

11. when using techniques that investigate color associations and preferences (for example, "Lusher Color Test", "Solomin I.L. Color Metaphor Technique"), the diagnostician should not name the colors depicted, the names of colors and associations with them should be called orally by the examinee;

12. if the examinee cannot operate with tabular forms of presenting answers to questions from standardized test methods, submit a form of answers in the form of a list of questions, or fill out a form from the words of the examinee (with subject visual agnosia, optical-mnestic aphasia, optical alexia);

13. when conducting a psychodiagnostic interview, use complex logical constructions with double negation, stable expressions, proverbs in several questions; evaluate emotional reactions, adequacy and logic of the answer.

The proposed recommendations should be used in the practical activities of penitentiary psychologists. Subsequent research involves the development of forms of diagnostic forms for conducting primary psychodiagnostics of candidates for service and convicts, suspects, accused upon admission to institutions of the penitentiary system, with subsequent testing and evaluation of their diagnostic capabilities.