TEACHING SOCIAL SKILLS IN SMALL GROUPS OF CHILDREN WITH MULTIPLE DISABILITIES: MOTOR AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES. AN INTERVENTION PROGRAM

Abstract

Few studies have been conducted in Greece, which focus on the education of children with multiple disabilities (motor and intellectual disabilities, ID). Four children between the ages 9 and 15 with multiple disabilities (motor and ID) were selected to be taught social skills. The aim of this qualitative study was to provide training with regard to cognitive and communication skills and more specifically conversational skills to the four children in order to allow them to engage in conversational exchanges with their peers. Participants were evaluated for their mental capacity and assigned to two groups according to their ability. The intervention combined a table game (puzzle pairs), small-group teaching of structured questions with their answers, modeling, error correction, social praise and tangible reinforcement. A within-subject withdrawal design was used to show the acquisition of knowledge and of the ability to converse through conditions of baseline, teaching, probes and generalization measures. All participants learned to engage in structured conversations. This knowledge generalized and maintained to different settings after 3 and 7 months. A social validity measure affirmed these improvements in their ability to converse. Article visualizations: