engleski

Providing Stimulative Environment for Children with Intelectual Disabilities perceptually based intervention and adaptive behavior skills in children with intellectual disabilities

The analysis of educational problems in children with intellectual disabilities indicate that they very often start school with poor perceptual experience which affects their learning capacities, as well as their social adaptation. Such situation is usually the result of inadequate bio-psycho-social factors such as: neurological problems, cognitive abilities and social environment (Levandovski et al., 1992). These findings were confirmed in several researches in Croatia, which studied the structure of cognitive abilities in individuals with different levels of intellectual functioning (Teodorović & Fulgosi-Masnjak, 1992). This research topic is very important not only for understanding the nature of intellectual disabilities, but also for the development of empirically based habilitation programs. Therefore the aim of this study was to explore the effects of the 10 months application of the experimental Program for Perceptual Motor Stimulation on adaptive behaviour skills in the group of 11 school children with intellectual disabilities. All children lived in their families and their parents were participating in this study as well. AAMD Adaptive Behaviour Scale, Part I (Igrić & Fulgosi-Masnjak, 1991), was applied with parents of this targeted group of children. Since this measure was collected before the application of the experimental Program, it was also used as initial data. The purpose of the applied Program was to improve adaptive behaviour skills through perceptual motor stimulation and to enhance social adaptation of children with intellectual disabilities. After 10 months of experimental program application positive changes have been observed in all areas of measured skills of everyday independent living.

Key words: intellectual disabilities; perceptual-motor stimulation; adaptive behaviour.

nije evidentirano