Effects of Social Skills Training for Students with an Intellectual Disability

This study examined the effects of a computer-assisted social skills intervention on the social competence of 73 students with a mild intellectual disability (age range: 11.0 to 15.0) within an experimental and control group design. The experimental group (N = 38) was trained with the I Found a Solution computer-supported package while the control group (N = 35) worked on computer-related keyboard and writing skills. The intervention consisted of the computer-supported program and teacher-guided work, small-group discussions and transfer to actual real-life conflicts. Each student was assessed before and after the training on: teacher-rated social skills and disruptive behaviour, peer-rated social acceptance, and self-rated loneliness. A 2-way MANOVA with repeated measures (grouping by gender, with pre/post training scores as the repeated measures) revealed that the experimental group increased their different measures of social competence, and the differences between them and the control group were significant following the intervention. However, no significant differences between the experimental and control groups were found in their loneliness experience. Implications for intervention and additional research are discussed.