The main condition for personal and mental development of a child is preservation of speech function or, in case of speech pathology, correction and development of all its structural components as a fullfledged means of communication. The purpose of the study is to scientifically substantiate, develop and experimentally test psychological and pedagogical conditions and methods of formation of speech activity in children with autistic disorders of older preschool age. There were highlighted effective methods for speech activity formation: creation and maintenance of a speech environment; constant speech support of a child; teaching a child to express thoughts in any way possible; use of stimulants and incentives in order to increase motivation for speech activity; use of available child's vocalizations; use of echolalia and a tendency to stereotypical repetition of actions; stimulation of speech activity against the background of emotional recovery; development of speech activity by imitation; activation of passive vocabulary and its gradual translation into active; fostering initiative and desire for self-realization. The indicators of the formation level of speech activity components in EG

Speech development of a child with autism does not always take place at the appropriate age and does not always obey the laws of development of speech functions. According to the analysis of literature sources, the direct study of speech activity of children with autistic disorders requires a more detailed study. According to our predictions, a child with autistic disorders of older preschool age due to the peculiarities of communicative and behavioral spheres will show a low level of speech activity, which can be explained directly by the specificity of speech development along with limited language experience and insufficient knowledge of language and its use in communication. Language behavior consists of two complementary and interrelated processes: psychological formation (generation) of speech utterance and perception of the expanded speech of the interlocutor. The model of speech utterance generation includes five consecutive, interconnected stages (phases) identified by O.O. Leontiev (1967): the motive of utterance; the idea of expression; internal programming; lexical and grammatical development of the utterance; implementation of speech expression in external speech. Speech activity is one of the many forms of general activity, a reflection of the needs that arise in accordance with specific communication situations, a prerequisite and an important component of language behavior. The term "speech activity" is considered by us in the sense of the presence of a motive for speech utterance and direct speech utterance, which may occur as a reaction-response to the interlocutor's remark or as a desire to inform the interlocutor of their own thoughts, experiences, emotions, needs.

The causes of autism remain insufficiently differentiated. It is unlikely that any single disorder can be considered as the only cause of various symptoms and severity of autistic disorders. Although the specific causes of autism remain unclear, significant progress has been made in understanding the possible mechanisms of the disease. Turning to historical sources, we find that the origin and origin of the term "autism" are associated with forming a system of knowledge on the problem of diagnosis and further therapeutic work with children who need unique approaches to learn and educate. Analysis of the classifications of autism reveals the ambiguity of approaches to them. The first attempts at differentiation in the middle of childhood autism syndrome were clinical classifications based on the syndrome's etiology. They play a significant role in developing adequate approaches to providing medical care to children with autism. Psychological and pedagogical tasks required other approaches to determine, depending on the specific situation, the specialization, strategy, and tactics of correctional work. First of all, there was a search for prognostic signs that would assess the possibilities of mental and social development of children in this category. To this end, some scholars have put forward criteria for assessing speech and intellectual development. The analysis of difficulties of the unanimous possibility of classification on separate indicators of mental development of the child (intelligence, speech, behavior, self-regulation, etc.) can be explained by parallel existence of classifications operating today in world practice.

A sign of the humanization of the modern pedagogical process is a profound change in its organization, primarily in creating conditions for the formation of a holistic personality of the child. The method of forming speech activity of children with autistic disorders of senior preschool age can act as an organizational and pedagogical system, which includes the functioning of specific conditions: organizational and pedagogical (the main of which - the creation of educational and corrective and communicative environment); general didactic (continuity, stages, system in the content of the formation of speech activity); technological (pedagogical and speech therapy diagnosis - starting and finishing - of the child as a basis for organizing the formation of speech activity of children with autistic disorders of older preschool age). Among the auxiliary conditions can be distinguished cognitive, creative, and communicative. Taking into account the peculiarities of mental, emotional, communicative, and speech development, we anticipate that the level of speech activity in children with autistic disorders will increase under the conditions of implementation of our methodology, and providing selected psychological and pedagogical conditions will accelerate and optimize this process.

The speech activity formation is a pretty complex multifaceted long-term process, particularly, formation of speech activity in children with autistic disorders. According to the research objectives, we have designed corrective-developmental methods of formation of speech activity in pre-school children with autistic disorders. Working on the corrective-developmental methods, we have considered the research results, program requirements to the speech development of elder pre-schoolers, level of speech capabilities of every child, law regularities of the speech function development in ontogenesis and scientific-methodical principles and aspects of the speech development correction for children with speech disorders. As per the principles that we have substantiated, the research-diagnostic, correction-activity and function-speech stages of our methods show their outer and inner bounds. Moreover, the identified stages of the corrective-developmental methods are closely interrelated and characterised with their combination as a continuous pedagogical process; and the knowledge, skills and habits obtained by elder pre-schoolers with autistic disorders are considered as an integral system. We have included initiative as capability to speak in a monologue, motivation as capability to speak in a dialogue, content-richness as saturation of the active oral speech with language units clear to a child with autistic disorders (words, word combinations, phrases, sentences) as well as sound imitations, sound complexes and vocalisation to the main components of speech activity. Thus, after entrenching our methods we have processed and generalised the results of identifying levels of formed speech activity as capability to speak in a monologue and dialogue and use of particular language units according to the quantitative indices.