Social Skills Training of Children with Learning Disability

Abstract

Purpose: The ability to recognise emotions in oneself and in others is a fundamental prerequisite to function successfully in the social world. Emotion recognition deficit in people with learning disability may therefore be an important contributory factor to deficits in social skills and poor social adaptation. This study aimed to examine the level of emotional understanding in students with learning disabilities (LD). Method: A pre-test, post-test equivalent groups design was adopted for this study. The focus was on identification of emotions through verbal and pictorial situations, and the appropriate expression of emotions. Training was provided to enhance the emotional understanding of students through the use of 'I C ME' module. The 6 emotions addressed in this study were anger, excitement, embarrassment, jealousy, love and anxiety. 30 children with LD, in the age group of 9-12 years, were selected for the study. Results: It was seen that while children with LD had difficulty in the identification of an emotion, they found it more difficult to express the emotion in a socially appropriate way. The post-test results indicated that the training provided to the students significantly improved their emotional understanding. Conclusions: The students learnt about the 6 emotions (anger, excitement, embarrassment, love, jealousy, and anxiety), the vocabulary associated with these emotions, and also the appropriate way to express, self-monitor and self-regulate each emotion. Limitations: Intervention was done for only 6 emotions.

Relation between Learning Disabilities and Socioemotional Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

“…They are perceived as less independent and have difficulties in waiting in turns, in learning in groups, and in making decisions during class activities [10]. However, one study determined that children with LD do not have significant effects on social or antisocial behaviors [6], and another that their sample with LD has better SEC than the rest of the boys and girls with different Special Education Needs (SEN) [8].…”

“…The comparison of results between female and male sex is not one of the topics of greatest interest in this review. In those that do analyze it, it can be observed that the percentage of the sample of children and adolescents is higher than that of women [2,4,5,6,9]. Likewise, it is recognized that girls and adolescents obtain better scores in competences and social skills, while men have greater problems concerning antisocial behavior [6,7,9].…”

“…However, it is not clear which part of such difficulties would derive from LDs and which, from SECs, or even if when LD and SEC are presented together they are more serious. It could also be observed that the interest in reducing these difficulties has prompted the proposal of some intervention programs to increase and balance the SEC of this population [3,6,15,23,27,37].…”

“…Likewise, it was found that most of the studies [2,5,6,7,10,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,20] approach their research from a population with a general interpretation of LD. It means that it is specifically undetailed in which area or fields of learning children/adolescents have difficulties, except for six studies that do [3,4,8,12,19,21] and a pair combining populations with both general and specific diagnoses [1,9].…”

“…General descriptive summary Identify the level of socio-emotional competence in boys, girls and / or adolescents with LD compared to their peers without LD[1,2,3,4, 5,6,7] Identify the level of socio-emotional competence in boys, girls and / or adolescents with LD compared to their peers with other SEN[8] Analysis of results on the relationship between LD and SEC…”