Behavior analytic approach for enhancing social behavior of visually handicapped children with developmental disability.

2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 14510121
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 教育・社会系心理学
• Research Institution: University of Tsukuba
• Principal Investigator: KATO Motoshige University of Tsukuba, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, Asistant Professor, 大学院・人間総合科学研究科, 助教授 (00114059)
• Project Period (FY): 2002 – 2004
• Keywords: developmental disability / visually handicap / social behavior / applied behavior analysis / peer mediation / incidental teaching

Research Abstract

Visually handicapped children are not highly motivated because of the lack of visual stimulus, and have a wide range of restriction for observational learning of social behavior. As the social skills training, widely used in the School for the Blind of the United States of America, is the discrete approach, it remains a lot of problems for maintaining and generalizaion of appropriate social behavior of developmentally disabled children.
The present study was conducted to reveal the effects of (1)the applied behavior analytic intervention of modified social skills training for the visually handicapped pupil of the School for the Blind based on incidental teaching method, (2)the initiation of social interaction, and (3)the peer mediated program for the visually handicapped pupil with developmentally disability in the regular school.
The behavioral intervention program used in this study revealed significant effects in enhancing social behavior of visually and developmentally handicapped children. These results suggested the necessity of early support plans for those children's social behaviors.